Dear Educational and Municipal Leaders in Malden,

It has come to our attention that the Malden Public Schools are currently considering the integration of “AI learning tools” into the school curriculum and teaching process.

As a recent Public Radio headline put it:

“Open AI, Microsoft and Anthropic are partnering with teachers to introduce their ‘AI learning tools’ into schools. The companies are paying for teacher training in a bid to make inroads into school systems, as part of their quest for dominance in the AI industry.”

This quote tells us everything we need to know about corporate AI in schools. It’s not about students, it’s not about teachers, and it’s certainly not about learning. It’s about billionaire-owned tech companies – some of the most extractive and oppressive companies in modern history – making a cynical push to keep their bubble of hype and over-valuation inflated. These companies are currently trying to sign contracts across the country that will inject their unproven, unnecessary and demonstratively damaging products into our schools and institutions – places from which it will be remarkably hard to remove them once they’re integrated into curriculum – in order to create the illusion of usefulness and wide adoption.

We often hear about “artificial intelligence” driving cancer research, accelerating drug development, preserving dying languages, etc. While small, task-specific models of machine learning do have great utility in the hands of trained researchers and scientists, the AI that’s being pushed upon students is markedly different. Schools are being marketed the Silicon Valley model of AI, exemplified by the tech giants mentioned in that news headline above, in the form of chatbots, large language models and similar predictive products.

These products are being over-hyped for profit, and are in direct contradiction to our values of environmental sustainability, human dignity, educational integrity, data privacy, and democracy.

They’re doing substantial damage to creative work, to copyright law, to our – and our children’s – future employment. They’re decimating working class jobs, as well as jobs in professional fields like journalism, the arts and, of course, teaching.

The spike in energy usage caused by these extractive AI companies may be the largest we’ve seen since the industrial revolution, if we don’t refuse them now. We, as citizens, parents and educators, are committed to ensuring a thriving and viable future for our kids, and we absolutely cannot tolerate the destruction of their ecosystem, the pollution and depletion of their air and water, the suffering inevitable from extreme weather and climate change in their lifetimes.

The risks to our schools’ integrity, to our teaching professions, to our children’s very cognitive abilities are profound. Numerous studies show that engaging with “AI tools” causes a decline in creative and critical thinking skills, and even a reduction in IQ. A recent MIT study about AI usage demonstrated how it results in cognitive offloading – the outsourcing of critical thinking to software, resulting in a loss of critical thinking skills – as well as how difficult this process is to reverse once it’s begun. Interacting with predictive software also increases feelings of isolation, and damages social-emotional learning.

To quote another open letter from experts about technology in education; "These 'AI' products are materially and psychologically detrimental to our students' ability to write and think for themselves, existing instead for the benefit of investors and multinational companies."

At a time when there is universal concern about screen time, outrage about the dangers of social media, and schools are passing phone bans, we plead with you not to insert another unnecessary and damaging technology between our students and their teachers. Our children deserve less technology mediating their interactions, deserve human connection, and deserve to be met face-to-face by caring adults; parents, teachers, coaches, counselors.

We know that Massachusetts prides itself on innovation and early adoption, but please; let this hype cycle pass without allowing the AI companies to do any more damage than they already have.

As one Massachusetts school administrator recently said; this moment with AI is remarkably like the moment when we were introduced to asbestos. Yes, it had some remarkably promising characteristics – fireproofing! – and had some real utility in science, research, and industrial applications. But a profit-driven industry bullied us into inserting it everywhere; into our homes and schools and public spaces, before we really understood the risks. This resulted in decades, if not centuries, of illness, injuries, deaths, and the astronomical financial burden of trying to remove the stuff.

As you, the leaders and policymakers in our schools, craft an AI policy for our district, we the undersigned call on you to:

1. Ban AI tools into the classroom, protect our students and teachers from de-skilling and allow them the space and time to engage in assignments themselves.

2. Resist any direct financial relationship or contracts with AI providers, as well as the “training” they might offer.

3. Provide a digital literacy curriculum to help students navigate the current digital landscape, and promote critical engagement with technology.

4. Guarantee that anywhere generative AI has already entered our classrooms or curriculum, an opt-out will allow students and teachers to refuse the use of these products at no risk to their grades, progress or employment.

Sincerely,

Your Community