New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has banned AI for pupils up to 14-years-old for the upcoming year. This move was not initiated by teachers but by a grassroots organisation lead by parents.

Mamdani said: “Kids need to learn to think for themselves. They need to work alongside their peers. They need to learn how to ask better questions, and they need to learn what it feels like to not know the answer.”

New York is not the first district to ban AI for younger children. Los Angeles, the second-largest district, has a districtwide moratorium on AI use in education. Norway already preceded them by banning AI in primary education.

Kids don’t need AI. Kids need peers, a good teacher, and a tangible world to explore. If AI is so amazing, they will easily learn about it when they have developed more self-confidence, when they know how to cope with struggling to find the answer. Even companies like Anthropic and OpenAI don’t allow these kids to use their AI-models according to their EULAs. There should not be a debate.

But banning or restricting AI is not enough to properly prepare pupils for the future. We cannot go back to our desks and pretend we are ten, twenty years back.

In the post-truth, AI-driven age, students need to be given the tools to critically assess AI and those who want to implement it. They need to be prepare for unknown technology that will be there in the future and will also attempt to undermine human values, the environment, and democracy.

That means teachers need to make sure students can think for themselves, acquire domain knowledge, know how to ask tough questions, to have confidence in their own ideas and know how to make technology work for the people rather than the people for technology.

That means the work has only just begun.