Dive Brief:
- Two major teachers unions — the American Federation of Teachers and the United Federation of Teachers — announced an agreement with Microsoft on Wednesday that establishes a legally enforceable safety and privacy standard for artificial intelligence in schools that use the tech giant's products.
- Specifically, the agreement bars Microsoft from using student and educator data to train AI models as well as selling or using that data for advertising purposes. It also ensures that schools ultimately control how the data is used, retained and erased, and it requires Microsoft’s AI tools to implement strong security protections and be designed to avoid harmful or manipulative experiences for students.
- The agreement will go into effect on Nov. 1 and be available to every school district nationwide. Districts can add the AI safety and privacy standards to their new or current contracts with Microsoft without being required to renew or renegotiate.
Dive Insight:
While Microsoft is the only company to agree to the unions’ new National AI Safety and Privacy Standard so far, AFT President Randi Weingarten said during a Wednesday morning press conference that she wants more companies to sign.
Among those she hopes will sign are OpenAI and Anthropic, which have also partnered with AFT, UFT and Microsoft on the National Academy for AI Instruction. The academy, which launched last year, aims to train over 400,000 teachers to be AI fluent by 2030.
The new agreement is “a first of its kind,” said Weingarten, adding that it’s happening as federal and state laws are currently lacking when it comes to enforcing guardrails to protect students and teachers from the potential risks of using AI in schools.
As AFT and UFT push for more AI guardrails in the classroom, two of the nation’s largest public school systems — New York City Public Schools and Los Angeles Unified School District — each last week announced moratoriums for student-facing AI tools while also curbing students’ screen time during the school day.
Weingarten said Wednesday that she supported the temporary AI bans and screen time limits in both districts. She also said that AI can be both powerful and dangerous.
“You have to have a sense of how to use this, not how it just lands on us and we’re told to do it,” Weingarten said.
Additionally, Weingarten in May called for a screen ban for students in pre-K through 2nd grade as well as the prohibition of AI tools for all elementary students.
Weingarten continued to echo that sentiment on Wednesday, saying that “the major reason that New York City — and I hope others — are doing a moratorium on children-facing AI is because we have to get back to how we help develop the muscle of teaching and learning without the cognitive offloading.”
