Nashville Turns Out to Resist AI Data Centers

 

Happy Obama Appreciation Day

 Clip from 2011 White House Correspondents' Dinner:

The National Push for a Five-Year Pause on Generative AI in Schools

Join the growing movement to establish a five-year moratorium on the use of generative AI in schools.  

From Fairplay’s Position Statement:

As generative AI products1 proliferate in educational spaces, they are posing risk of significant harm to children. We, the undersigned, call for a five-year pause on all student-facing generative AI products in PreK-12 schools. Currently, these products threaten:

a) Student and educator privacy and autonomy; 

b) Skill development, including cognition, critical thinking, analytic  reasoning, decision-making, emotion regulation, and relationship-building; 

c) Mental health, fairness, safety, and the right to a high-quality education; 

d) Educators’ role as professionals; 

e) Academic integrity; 

f) The environment.

. . . .

CALL FOR FIVE-YEAR PAUSE

The rapid expansion of generative AI products into schools without oversight, community input, or evaluation of implications is not inevitable. A five-year pause on all products using generative AI that impact children in pre-K-12 schools would allow time for school communities, including students, educators, administrators, and parents, to learn about the implications and uses of generative AI products in education, to ask questions, and to provide feedback.

In particular, it would give time for schools to train staff and ensure that any generative AI products used will:

● Improve learning outcomes without cognitive offloading or impeding human relationships;

● Demonstrate absolute safety for use by students (addressing issues of addiction, persuasive design, data and privacy risks, exposure to harmful content, mental health, parasocial relationships, cyberbullying, etc);

● Not be used for non-authorized purposes such as cheating, academic

dishonesty, or plagiarism;

● Sufficiently consider and prioritize privacy, civil rights, ethics, justice, and climate impacts of generative AI products;

● Never be used in place of teachers, especially for vulnerable populations such as neurodivergent students, at-risk students, and students of low socio-economic status.

Until and unless the above can be shown (or there is evidence to support all of the above), generative AI products should not be used in pre-K-12 schools. Further, state and provincial governments and education departments, and federal, state, and provincial regulators should use this pause to develop and implement:

● An audit of existing generative AI platforms for efficacy, safety, and legality, performed by neutral, independent third parties;

● A registry of generative AI products currently in use, including the location of collected data, especially the intellectual property of students and teachers;

● A vetting process for new generative AI products prior to their introduction into pre-K-12 schools;

● A framework for culturally-responsive, relational approaches to communication that provides opportunities for technology-free, play-based learning spaces;

● Transparent, thoughtful, protective, and rigorous protections governing the use of generative AI products in schools, independently vetted by neutral third parties;

● Sufficient policies to protect student data, eliminate any advertising or marketing, prohibit addictive algorithms and gamification, and forbid products that maximize engagement or profit off student data.

Written by members of the Screen Time Action Network’s Screens in Schools Work Group: Emily Cherkin, MEd, Faith Boninger, PhD, Shaleen Title, MS, JD, Denise Champney, MS, CCC-SLP, and Kelly Clancy, PhD. No generative AI was used to produce this document.

Premieres October 9

 

AI Tutoring is the Logical Extension of High-Stakes Testing

Clips from an excellent op-ed in the NYTimes by the President of Bank Street College in New York.  After you read it, follow this link, and get onboard:

Last year, I visited a seventh-grade math classroom in a public school in the Bronx. Twenty students sat bent over laptops, working with an A.I. tutor on story problems about converting fractions to decimals. A teacher moved around the room, checking a dashboard that tracked how many tries each student needed to reach the right answer.

On the surface, the classroom was working. Students were engaged, and most of them, eventually, were getting to the right answers.

When I looked closely, though, many of the students were lost. They didn’t understand fractions conceptually. Each time one of them made a mistake, the A.I. tutor backed up and suggested another step, but it never identified the underlying gap in understanding. The teacher could not see it either. Her dashboard showed which students were stuck, but not why.

The core intellectual work of teaching is noticing why a child’s understanding breaks down and then knowing what to do. It might mean pausing the class for a mini-lesson or pulling out fraction tiles for one student who needs to visualize the math. In the class I visited, that work had been handed to a tool that could do neither. No one was arguing about strategy or turning to the kid across the table to ask, “Wait, how did you get that?” Each child sat alone. Silent, in front of a screen, clicking away.  

. . .For a generation, American schools have been shaped by standardized tests that measure a narrow band of skills. Because the tests carry high stakes, teachers teach to them. The curriculum narrows. Time for projects, argument and problem-solving shrinks. The A.I. tutor drilling concepts a seventh grader doesn’t understand is not an aberration of that system. It is its logical extension. 

. . . .Parents and educators across the country are organizing. In New York City, they have demanded a moratorium on A.I. in schools. Nationally, a coalition of more than 250 child development experts and advocacy organizations is calling for a five-year pause on generative A.I. in K-12 classrooms. They are right to be alarmed. . . .

Dear PGA: Please Help

 

@pganews.bsky.social I love to watch the PGA on TV, but because so many of your tournaments are on a fascist-controlled network (CBS) that I and millions of others do not watch, I am left on Sunday afternoons without golf’s soothing semi-whispered commentary that my proper napping requires.

— James Horn (@schools-matter24.bsky.social) June 8, 2026 at 9:06 AM

Victims’ Revenge?

With politicos, tech bros, cryptos, and other billionaire scummers having gone all-in on the AI insanity game, what recourse will there be for non-violent resistance and protest against the tech-infused planetary plunder and genocide?

Will yachts the size of ocean liners or magnificent island hideaways or fortressed mountain retreats insulate the elite rapacious perpetrators from the billions of victims intent upon accountability or, at least, revenge?  

Will there be forgiveness for the unforgivable?  

A clip from a good article this morning at the Guardian:

. . . . The closing off of legitimate avenues to address public opposition to AI, as well as the feeling that the technology is being forced upon society, is creating what researchers describe as a gap in accountability that can further incentivize terrorism and political violence.

Donald Trump, in alignment with tech leaders, issued an executive order last year attempting to block any state-level legislation that would rein in AI development and has said that nothing will slow down the US in the global AI race. Tech billionaires are also pouring millions of dollars into lobbying and political spending in an attempt to prevent regulation of AI.

“When authorities are too busy, or just don’t care enough, to regulate and take action, then people affected are going to take action,” said Mauro Lubrano, a lecturer at the University of Bath and author of Stop the Machines: The Rise of Anti-Technology Extremism. . . .

And then there are those like Molly Jong-Fast, who gave a commencement address last week at her alma mater, Bennington College.  She had this to say in a NYTimes op-ed just after. 

I hope her guarded optimism is warranted:

If I were to tell these graduates the truth about artificial intelligence, it would be this: You are right to be worried. But none of this is as inevitable as it seems. Remember putting everything on the blockchain? Remember NFTs? Hell, some of us are old enough to remember that the world was supposed to end in the year 2000.

Right now, A.I. is in its dark hype period — great for Anthropic’s I.P.O. — but who knows how useful any of this actually will be in the end in creating efficiencies (as in, replacing the young with bots). It’s within young people’s power to stop. Demand regulation of tech companies. Elect people who will legislate that regulation. Organize against data centers in your hometowns.

Don’t just boo — do something.

 

Tech Bros Racing to Take AI Crap Companies Public Before the Bubble Breaks

 

OpenAI and Anthropic now racing to go public before the AI bubble disintegrates. Stock sales to the dumb and the greedy will guarantee billionaire status for the top bros, who will use their inside knowledge to sell off before the collapse.

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— James Horn (@schools-matter24.bsky.social) June 2, 2026 at 2:25 PM