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.