Archives for category: Technology
« Older Entries

Bill Gates: Why AI Must Be Regulated, Why It Is Dangerous

By dianeravitch
October 6, 2026 //
3

President Trump met recently with leaders in technology companies that are building artificial intelligence. He told them that he wants the expansion of AI to be unregulated because he believes in unfettered competition and besides, we are in a race with China.

Bill Gates disagrees. He worries that AI could cause massive destruction, killing hundreds of millions of people.

Ezra Klein of the New York Times recently interviewed Gates and asked him why he believes that artificial intelligence should be regulated. Gates explains that AI could be directed to create bioweapons or it could be used to hack into our banking system and destroy our economy or the economy of any society dependent on networking.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/29/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-bill-gates.html?unlocked_article_code=1.FlE.gvt8.cX4tEJMVoEgk&smid=nytcore-ios-share

He does talk a bit about education towards the end of the interview. He recognizes the difficulty of scaling up innovations from a small group of highly motivated teachers to a much larger population of teachers.

But the big takeaway from the interview is that AI has the potential to do massive good for society or to inflict disruption and mass death. He makes the case for government regulations. We regulate automobiles, drugs, tobacco, alcohol, and a wide range of activities that are dangerous to humanity; why not regulate a technology that could destroy humanity?

The interview is here.

Categories Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Technology

Robert Hubbell: Republicans Are Out of Touch with the Past and the Future

By dianeravitch
September 30, 2026 //
10

Robert Hubbell is a steady and wise blogger who has a knack for interpreting events as they happen. While Heather Cox Richardson looks at the day’s events from a historical perspective; Hubbell has a keen perspective honed by age and experience.

At a time when the public is skeptical, even fearful, of artificial intelligence, Trump has embraced this powerful technology with fervor, reassuring the tech titans that the federal government won’t regulate them but will trust them to regulate themselves. Simultaneously, Bill Gates was worrying in public that AI had the potential to wipe out a billion people. This is a “don’t worry, be happy” moment for Trump and his circle. They Pooh-pooh the growing number of people who worry about what big data centers will do to their water supply, their electricity bills, their jobs, their lives. Trump doesn’t get it.

Meanwhile, Congressional Republicans have chosen to use the weeks before the mid-term elections rehashing the investigation of Trump’s efforts to overturn his electoral loss in 2024. They have chosen this moment to prosecute Jack Smith, who led the investigation of Trump. In their attempt to prove that Trump was unjustly targeted, they are successfully rekindling bad memories of January 6, 2021, when Trump summoned a mob to attack the U.S. Capitol. Five years later, is this a winning hand for them. Hubbell thinks not.

He wrote about yesterday’s events;

Tuesday was a wild news day, but the throughline is this: Republicans are missing this moment in America, only five weeks before the midterms. They are clutching to the transitory retrograde spasm that propelled Trump to the presidency for all it is worth. They have no platform, no values, no principles, and no vision, so they cling tightly to the culture wars they exploited for a decade. But Americans have moved on to new issues, including the threat of uncontrolled artificial intelligence, the growing economic chasm between the haves and have-nots, the crushing burden of medical debt, the unaffordability of higher education, and the imploding economy for those who work for a living.

As the electorate recoils in disgust and fear over the coming onslaught at the hands of AI, Trump posed with nineteen AI oligarchs at the White House (eighteen of whom are men). At that meeting, Trump surrendered control of AI’s future to the handful of billionaires who will most benefit from the reckless development of a technology that will put millions of Americans out of work while polluting their communities and driving up electricity costs. Talk about a lack of self-awareness. See CNN Politics, Trump’s blasé attitude toward AI risks backfiring politically.

Per CNN,

Trump’s answer to voters who worry that AI will take their jobs, or who look askance at data centers’ enormous strains on electrical grids and water supplies, is an optimistic promise that such installations are “going to be very popular” and will make everyone rich.

He’s causing himself an immediate political problem. Some 75% of Americans view the growth of AI with fear and concern, according to a CNN/SSRS poll last week, and 71% want the federal government to do more to regulate it. Higher electricity bills attributed to the immense proliferation of data centers are deepening affordability frustrations among voters — a top midterm election issue.

So, at a time when more than 70% of Americans fear AI and want the government to regulate it,Trump entered into a deal that handed control of AI to the men most likely to profit from its unregulated development. See NBC News, After summit with tech titans, Trump calls for ‘self-regulation’ by AI companies.

When in the history of the world has “self-regulation” by monopolists ever inured to the benefit of the people—as opposed to the generational wealth of the monopolists?

At the luncheon, Trump and the AI oligarchs signed a “White House Accord on Super Intelligence,” Trump’s rebranding of “artificial intelligence.” The term “super intelligence” is insulting to humans. “Artificial intelligence” correctly signals that the technology is a probabilistic prediction model about which words follow other words. Calling it “super intelligence” signals that it is superior to human intelligence—which it is not and never will be. But Trump sees a profit opportunity in convincing people that they are inferior to AI, so he chose the moment five weeks before the midterms to align himself with the AI oligarchs and their dangerous vision of the future.

The “Accord on Super Intelligence” (which has not been made public—another worrisome sign) allegedly commits the AI tech companies to “building robust internal controls and detecting if there are any issues with the technology, coupled with multiple layers of auditing and controls, starting with internal risk review.” See The Guardian, Trump announces vague ‘morally binding’ AI deal among tech CEOs for ‘tremendous self-policing’.

You have got to be kidding, right?

If the AI tech companies are not already “building robust controls” and “detecting issues with the technology” and submitting it to “multiple layers of auditing and risk review,” then those tech companies should be shut down immediately. And if they are already employing those practices, then Trump got nothing in exchange for his agreement to let the AI oligarchs regulate themselves.

But the larger point is that hosting an AI oligarchs’ lovefest at the White House was Trump’s strategy for stopping his freefall in the polls. It was a monumentally stupid idea that was improbably exceeded in its stupidity by Senate Republicans who thought that the best way to distract from inflation, the Iran war, and existential fear of AI was to remind voters that Trump mounted an insurrection in 2021. They did so by bringing former special counsel Jack Smith to the Senate for a hearing.

For the third time, Jack Smith gave a commanding performance, reminding congressional Republicans that he had developed evidence that proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump conspired to obstruct the congressional count of electoral votes and unlawfully took national defense documents when he left office. See PBS, WATCH: Jack Smith says he would prosecute Trump again for ‘serious crimes against our nation’.

Apart from the gross error of believing the American people are focused on Jack Smith’s investigation of Trump’s crimes instead of the war, inflation, and the AI threat, GOP Senator Eric Schmitt’s questioning of Jack Smith turned into a debacle for the ages. Senator Schmitt believed he could prove that Jack Smith attended an NBA Atlanta Hawks game in February 2024 to surreptitiously conspire with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.

After Jack Smith said he did not attend the game, Senator Schmitt smirked and accused Smith of perjury. Senator Schmitt concluded by calling Jack Smith a “dirt bag.”

When Jack Smith was handed a copy of the texts that allegedly placed him at a men’s professional basketball game featuring the NBA Atlanta Hawks, he said he could explain.

Instead of being at the Atlanta Hawks men’s professional basketball game, Jack Smith was at a women’s college basketball game between Maryland and Iowa. The University of Iowa’s sports teams are known as “the Hawkeyes” (not the Hawks). See C-SPAN, Sen. Schmitt confuses Hawks and Hawkeyes While Accusing Jack Smith of Perjury. The C-SPAN clip is 7 minutes long and contains the gist of the exchange.

Right-wing media was prepared for Senator Schmitt’s planned perjury trap—which failed in a spectacular fashion when it turned out that Senator Schmitt did not know the difference between the NBA Atlanta Hawks and the Iowa Hawkeyes women’s basketball team. 

Several right-wing podcasters and commentators released canned statements saying that Schmitt had trapped Jack Smith in perjury but they later deleted those statements when they realized that Senator Schmitt had committed a face-plant for the ages. See Rolling Stone, Eric Schmitt Gaffe in Jack Smith Hearing Covered as Win by MAGA Media. (“Johnson deleted his post later on Tuesday, after it had been up for hours with a community correction. Sean Hannity also picked up and ran with Schmitt’s story, but deleted his post highlighting the moment soon after.”)

But the more significant point is that Senator Schmitt’s planned perjury trap for Jack Smith was intended as his stealth launch as a vice-presidential candidate in JD Vance’s 2028 presidential campaign. Hours before the Senate hearing, someone planted a story with the ever-obliging Axios that there was “buzz” that Senator Schmitt might be JD Vance’s running mate. See Axios, Sen. Eric Schmitt is drawing buzz as a possible Vance VP in 2028.

Axios reporter Jim VandeHei wrote, “We hear the VP views Schmitt, 51, as trustworthy, intelligent, articulate, and a deft political operator.”

The Axios story was obviously planted by JD Vance or Eric Schmitt. It aged badly in four hours.

More to the point, if JD Vance thinks Eric Schmitt is a good VP candidate, it confirms that Republicans are more out of touch than imagined. Vance exudes arrogance and creepiness— “anti-charisma.” Eric Schmitt would add sneering smugness with a dollop of white nationalism to the ticket. 

The fact that anyone thought to float a trial balloon of Eric Schmitt as a VP candidate shows that the next generation of Republican leaders are missing the moment and failing to anticipate the future direction of the American electorate.

Other examples abound. The backlash against the implementation of Trump’s mass deportation policy has been severe. Rather than deporting the “worst of the worst,” Trump has effectively kidnapped law-abiding, productive members of American society and deported them to troubled countries with which the deportees have no connection. So, for example, the US has agreements to deport people seized in the US to (among others) Liberia, Ghana, Cameroon, Eswatini, Equatorial Guinea, Rwanda, South Sudan, the DRC, and the Central African Republic. See Refugees International, Banished by Bargain: Third Country Deportation Watch (2026)

In the face of the backlash, the Trump administration is doubling down on its policy of renditions to third-party countries. On Tuesday, the US Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to continue its policy of deporting immigrants to third-party countries, at least for now. See Supreme Court Allows Trump Administration’s Third-Country Deportations, for Now.

Even if deportations are warranted and lawful, sending deportees to third countries with which they have no connection (and are often violence-prone) is cruel and inhumane. Trump and Stephen Miller appear to derive perverse pleasure from inflicting suffering on immigrants seeking asylum in the US.

And in a development that seems designed to ensure Ken Paxton’s defeat in his senatorial race against James Talarico, federal prosecutors in Texas have charged the Venezuelan DoorDash driver shot in the back by ICE agents with assault. See Man Shot by ICE Agent in Austin Is Charged With Assault – The New York Times

A similar story is playing out in education. On Monday, the Department of Education announced that it was officially removing a Biden administration rule that added LGBTQ protections to Title IX. See Education Week, Ed. Dept. Officially Kills Biden Rule That Added LGBTQ+ Protections to Title IX.

The Trump administration exhibits animus toward LGBTQ+ people in general, and toward transgender people in particular. Although the administration often justifies that animus on the grounds of preventing transgender people from participating in women’s sports, the repeal of the Biden-era rule is an attack on women who are victims of sexual assault on college campuses. As explained in the Education Week article,

The 2020 rules [imposed by Trump] notably had added more due-process protections for students accused of sexual harassment, an issue especially salient at the college level. . . . [¶]

The National Women’s Law Center warned the department’s move “significantly weakens protections against sexual harassment in education.” It pointed to a case of alleged sexual assault of a woman by fraternity members at Cornell University that has been in the news. A state prosecutor has reopened the investigation of the 2024 incident, which Cornell said in a statement that it supports notwithstanding its own Title IX investigation that resulted in a range of sanctions for the accused students.

In other words, at the very moment of national outrage over Cornell’s investigation and punishment of male students accused of a gang rape in 2022, the Trump administration is making it more difficult for victims of sexual assault to hold their attackers accountable. See Human Rights Campaign, You Get No Say: Trump Administration Abandons Rule Protecting LGBTQ+ Kids and Survivors of Sexual Assault in School Settings, Denying Public Any Chance to Weigh In.

As I said in the introduction, Republicans simply do not understand the cross-currents of change that are sweeping the country. Instead, they are running a playbook that ignores the fact that their standard-bearer has become everything that he ran against in 2016.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Democracy, Deregulation, Disruption, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Politics, Technology, Trump

How the Billionaires Manufactured an Education “Crisis”

By dianeravitch
September 14, 2026 //
7

Mike Simpson, known on Twitter as “Big Education Ape,” is known for his brilliant memes and editorial cartoons. Typically, they expose the latest fads and lies that defame teachers and public schools. Every once in a while, he publishes a great post, like this one.

He writes:

I’M SHOCKED, SHOCKED — HOW 30 YEARS OF BILLIONAIRE-FUNDED “REFORM” MANUFACTURED THE EDUCATION CRISIS IT PROMISED TO FIX

There’s a famous scene in Casablanca where Captain Renault declares he is “shocked, shocked” to find gambling going on — right before a croupier hands him his winnings. That’s essentially the posture of the billionaire reform industrial complex today, clutching its pearls over a Gallup poll showing public satisfaction with American schools has cratered to 32% — an 11-point nosedive in just two years — while quietly pocketing the profits of the crisis they spent three decades engineering.

Shocked. Absolutely shocked.

The Architecture of a Manufactured Crisis

Let’s be precise about the timeline, because precision matters when someone is picking your pocket.

For roughly 30 years, a well-funded constellation of think tanks, philanthropic foundations, hedge fund managers, and tech oligarchs pumped billions of dollars into a single, relentless narrative: public schools are failing. Not “underfunded.” Not “systematically neglected.” Failing — as in, inherently broken, irredeemably incompetent, populated by bad teachers protected by evil unions, and salvageable only by the heroic intervention of the private market.

The messaging was surgical. The money was real. And — surprise! — it worked.

As the Big Education Ape’s deep dive into school funding makes devastatingly clear, the playbook was never subtle:

Starve public schools of adequate funding. Declare them “failing.” Ride in on a white charter bus to “rescue” the children.

The chronic underfunding wasn’t fiscal negligence. In many states, it was a feature, not a bug. Squeeze hard enough, the theory went, and disruption would force innovation. What it actually forced was deferred maintenance, teacher shortages, and a generation of kids learning to read in buildings where the roof leaks and the textbooks predate the iPhone.

Now the poll numbers confirm the narrative took hold — and the reformers are citing those same poll numbers as proof they were right all along. The audacity is, genuinely, breathtaking.

The Numbers That Tell Two Very Different Stories

Here’s what the data actually shows — and what it doesn’t show:

Metric: The Headline. What It Actually Means Gallup Public Satisfaction 32% — record low 30 years of “failing schools” messaging worked exactly as intended.

Parent Satisfaction with Their Own School Historically ~2x the national figure People trust what they experience; they fear what they’re told

Math & Reading Scores Declining, especially bottom quartile Tracks directly with funding inequity and screen-time explosion

Top-tier U.S. Student Performance Still globally competitive. The “crisis” is concentrated where disinvestment is concentrated

The gap between how Americans rate schools in general versus their own child’s school is the smoking gun. It has always been the smoking gun. People who actually walk into a public school building — who meet the teachers, see the classrooms, watch their kids come home — consistently rate those schools dramatically higher than the national “failing” narrative suggests.

That gap is the manufactured crisis. It lives entirely in the space between lived experience and media-amplified fear.

$1.8 Billion Worth of Snake Oil, Served Fresh

And just when you thought the reform carousel might slow down, along comes the Science of Reading — the latest Next Big Thing™ in a long line of Next Big Things™ that have collectively cost American taxpayers tens of billions of dollars and produced reading scores that went, as the Big Education Ape’s withering analysis puts it, precisely nowhere.

Remember Common Core? $15.8 billion. A decade of standardized testing theater. Reading scores: unmoved.

Now we have the Science of Reading, $1.8 billion deep and climbing, with the same cast of vendors, the same philanthropic networks, and the same conspicuous absence of a money-back guarantee.

To be scrupulously fair: phonics works. Explicit decoding instruction works. The underlying research on structured literacy is legitimate. But here’s the thing about legitimate research — it doesn’t require a $1.8 billion vendor ecosystem, mandatory state legislation in 40+ states, and the systematic deskilling of teachers who are told to stop thinking and start following the script. When real science gets packaged into proprietary curricula, sold to districts under legislative mandate, and deployed without the trained human educators needed to implement it well, you don’t get science. You get very expensive phonics worksheets.

The question nobody in the reform complex wants to answer remains the same one it’s always been: Where is the money-back guarantee?

The Other Hand: How Tech Bros Broke Kids’ Brains While Selling the Cure

Here is the part of the story that deserves its own criminal investigation — or at minimum, a very uncomfortable congressional hearing.

The same Silicon Valley billionaires who spent decades pushing EdTech into classrooms as the revolutionary equalizer — screens for every student! –are the identical billionaires whose social media platforms have:

  • Collapsed long-form reading among adolescents at a rate researchers describe as one of the steepest drops in PISA history
  • Engineered algorithmic doom-scrolling that neurologically rewires 15-year-olds away from the sustained attention that math and reading comprehension require
  • Distracted over a quarter of students internationally during core academic instruction, by their own PISA survey data

They sold the disease and the cure. They pushed the screens that fragmented attention spans, then sold the adaptive software to remediate the fragmented attention spans, then pointed at the test scores and said: See? Public schools are failing.

As Big Education Ape’s piece on reading struggles frames it with characteristic bluntness: if you’re struggling to read this, you have some very rich friends to thank.

The Exit Ramp Is Marked “November 3”

None of this is inevitable. None of this is permanent. The No Kings Coalition — the sprawling, nonpartisan civic movement that flooded the streets in March — is now flooding the polls, with a Vote Early Day of Action on October 17 aimed squarely at the November 3, 2026 midterms.

The math is straightforward, even if the billionaires prefer we can’t do it:

  • Elect candidates who will defend public education funding, not divert it into voucher schemes that enrich private operators at public expense
  • Overturn the Supreme Court rulings — from Citizens United forward — that transformed American democracy into a billionaire auction
  • Restore the principle that public money follows public children into public schools, not into the portfolios of private equity firms with a “reform” logo.

The manufactured crisis has a manufactured solution: more billionaire intervention, more privatization, more EdTech, more testing, more disruption. The actual solution is considerably less glamorous and considerably more effective — fund schools equitably, pay teachers competitively, put phones away, and stop letting people who profit from public school failure write public school policy.

The Bottom Line

The 32% satisfaction number is not evidence that public schools have failed. It is evidence that a 30-year, billion-dollar propaganda campaign succeeded. The same people who manufactured the crisis are now selling the cure — at $1.8 billion a pop, no refunds, no guarantees, no accountability.

Meanwhile, the teachers who showed up every day through a pandemic, through chronic underfunding, through a staffing crisis, through the algorithmic dismantling of their students’ attention spans — those people are still in the classroom at 7 AM, doing the work that no EdTech platform, no voucher program, and no think tank white paper has ever actually replaced.

The casino is rigged. Captain Renault is shocked. And the November ballot is the one lever the house can’t control.

Vote like a public school depends on it. Because one does.

🔗 Related Reading from Big Education Ape:

Sources & Links

🔵 Public Satisfaction & Gallup Data

🔵 PISA Performance & International Benchmarks

🔵 School Funding, Privatization & the Manufactured Crisis

🔵 Science of Reading & EdTech Accountability

🔵 Democracy, Elections & the No Kings Coalition

All links verified active as of September 9, 2026. Primary polling data sourced from Gallup/Walton Family Foundation. PISA data sourced from NCES/OECD 2025 release.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reformers, Corruption, Cruelty, Curriculum, Democracy, Education Industry, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Failure, Fraud, Funding, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Hoax, Injustice, Lies, Literacy, Privatization, School Choice, Standardized Testing, State Takeover, Teacher Evaluations, Technology, Vouchers, Walton Foundation

OpenAI is Being Sued for Failing to Warn Officials about School Shooter

By dianeravitch
September 9, 2026 //
4

An 18-year-old young woman asked ChatGPT about violence. The bot gave her information instead of questioning and discouraging her violent urges. Months later, she killed her mother and stepbrother, then went to the local school and killed students and a teacher. The families of the victims are suing OpenAI for helping the shooter and failing to warn officials to stop her.

Futurism reports.

OpenAI is facing 30 new lawsuits from victims of the devastating school shooting in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, who accuse the company of providing “substantial assistance and encouragement” to the shooter and failing to alert police about her alarming ChatGPT interactions during the run-up to the mass killing.

The AI company’s legal peril is growing: it’s now fighting more than 50 lawsuits alleging that extensive use of its flagship chatbot, ChatGPT, wrought psychological harm, physical injury, or even death on users or those around them.

The new lawsuits weee brought against OpenAI by teachers and students who survived the Tumbler Ridge Massacre in February, in which eight adults and children were killed and 27 more were wounded in a rural Canadian mining town. The shooter, 18-year-old Jesse Van Rootselaar, fatally shot her mother and younger stepbrother at their home before attacking the school with a modified rifle and long gun, where she murdered five students — all aged between 12 and 13 — and a teacher.

OpenAI flagged her account. Months before the shooting, they debated whether to alert local officials. They decided not to do so, but deactivated her account. She quickly got a new account using a different name.

The lawsuits accuse OpenAI of negligence and “aiding and abetting a mass shooting,” alleging that ChatGPT stoked Van Rootselaar’s violent fantasies. The shooter’s chat logs have not yet been made public.

OpenAI is also being sued by victims of other mass shootings, where the chat logs showed their interest in killing others.

This is a helpful turn of events. AI providers should have key words that raise red flags and invite human oversight and intervention. ChatGPT could be programmed to alert human review and to discourage violence. It should be programmed with values: respect for others; kindness; the joy of giving and helping; and love of life.

Categories Extremism, Failure, Guns in Schools, Technology

Los Angeles School District Limits AI in Classrooms

By dianeravitch
September 4, 2026 //
8

As research continues to show the harmful effects of technology on student learning, parents are pushing against it. Los Angeles is the latest district to impose limits.

The district has a checkered history with technology, including massive purchases of a laptop for every student and allegations of payoffs by vendors.

AI has its strengths and weaknesses. It’s useful to obtain information, like where is a TV program streaming or who won the Presidency in 1920. But its interpretations are sometimes wrong, as is some of its information. It can write essays, after getting prompts. But when teachers assign essays, they expect students to write them, not AI.

I have corrected AI on several occasions, and the bot quickly apologized. On one occasion, I asked for NAEP scores in a particular state. The AI responded with a slant implying that NAEP “proficiency” was grade level, and those who did not reach it were below grade level. Of course, I pointed out that NAEP itself warns that “proficiency” is higher than grade level and represents “solid achievement, what most of us would call an A or B+. NAEP is not “grade level,” although many reporters think it is. The bot quickly admitted its error.

On another occasion, I asked for the bio of a friend, and AI had confused her with someone else. Again, it made a correction.

AI makes many errors. My college-age grandson told me he never uses it because it’s unreliable.

Worse, it is a shortcut to learning, like copying an answer from an encyclopedia. But it’s more dangerous because encyclopedias are usually subject to rigorous fact-checking. Students who turn in AI essays are not learning. They are cheating.

Dana Goldstein wrote in the New York Times:

The Los Angeles public school system will vastly restrict the use of artificial intelligence at all grade levels, district officials said on Wednesday at a board of education meeting.

The move came shortly after the nation’s largest school system, in New York City, announced it would ban most A.I. through 8th grade. Both developments seem to respond to an extraordinary movement, driven by parents, to push back against the incursion of technology and screens into childhood.

The board of education in the Los Angeles Unified School District previously barred cellphone use during the school day and strictly limited the hours per day students could spend on laptops.

The new A.I. restrictions, reported earlier by the Los Angeles Times, will apply for the current school year, as a board committee considers how to potentially incorporate the technology in the future, according to a district spokeswoman.

Students may still see A.I. summaries on top of Google searches, but will not be able to engage with Google’s Gemini chatbot within those searches, according to the district.

And they will not be able to use chatbot helpers that Google offers inside its Classroom software, including Google Docs, Google Sheets and Google Slides. Google Classroom is near-universally used in American schools.

Nicholas Melvoin, a school board member who sits on the committee studying A.I., said the board had been surprised by district officials’ decision to fully pause the technology for students.

While Mr. Melvoin has led the push to restrict student screen time, he raised questions about the wisdom of a complete A.I. ban for older teenagers, arguing they would need to understand the technology to prepare for college and the workplace.

“High school is where I would have more teacher discretion, with guardrails,” he said — similar to the path New York City officials outlined on Wednesday.

He said his committee would also consider the many big questions about how educators are using the technology, for lesson planning, grading, student feedback and communication with parents.

Los Angeles teachers continue to have access to A.I.

A.I. chatbots can help students learn, acting as a research tool or tutor breaking down complex concepts.

But chatbots can present misinformation. They have also led to an epidemic of cheating, as students prompt A.I. tools to write essays for them or complete problem sets. Even A.I. apps marketed specifically to schools have few blocks to prevent plagiarism or other forms of academic misconduct.

A growing body of research shows individuals who use chatbots can experience reduced critical thinking.

Common Sense Media, an advocacy group, has broadly tested A.I. chatbots and recommended their use be limited for people under 18, in part because they allow students to avoid the productive struggle of learning.

The group has also raised questions about A.I. search summaries, which may prevent students from seeking out multiple sources of information on contested subjects.

Yvette Renteria, chief program officer at Common Sense, praised the Los Angeles decision, saying it made sense to take a pause on a rapidly evolving technology. While Common Sense believes students of all ages should be given lessons in A.I. literacy to better understand how the technology works, she said that did not generally require classroom access to A.I. tools.

“At this moment, there is oftentimes more danger than opportunity,” Ms. Renteria said. She noted that students would still use A.I. outside of school on their personal devices, and argued that it remains crucial that educators talk to young people about the risks and potential rewards of A.I. use.

Categories Education Reform, Los Angeles, Technology

An Astonishing and Appropriate Use of AI

By dianeravitch
August 19, 2026 //
8

CNN reported an amazing story: Researchers used artificial intelligence to decipher papyrus scrolls that were burned almost 2,000 years ago. Previous attempts to unravel the scrolls had damaged them, even destroyed some. But these researchers created a way to expose their contents without unraveling them.

Lianne Kolirin of CNN reported:

CNN) — A papyrus scroll that was burned and carbonized when Mount Vesuvius erupted almost 2,000 years ago has been virtually unrolled and partially deciphered with the help of artificial intelligence.

The scroll — named PHerc. 1667 — is one of hundreds from the ancient Roman town of Herculaneum, which was buried under volcanic debris when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD, according to the Vesuvius Challenge, an initiative focused on decoding the texts of the Herculaneum scrolls without needing to physically unroll them.

Preserved under mud and ash in a villa believed to have once been owned by the father-in-law of Julius Caesar, the scrolls were discovered by an Italian farmer in the 18th century. The collection is the only large-scale library known to have survived from classical antiquity.

Burned so badly they were carbonized, the scrolls are extremely fragile. Over the years, scholars have tried to unroll them using a range of methods, including weights, chemicals, gases and pulverization, though this often led to the scrolls being damaged or destroyed.

The Vesuvius Challenge was launched by Brent Seales, a computer science professor at the University of Kentucky, and entrepreneurs Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross in 2023 to encourage researchers from around the world to try to decipher the scrolls by virtually unwrapping and decoding them.

Virtual unwrapping begins with a CT scan of each coiled-up, warped papyrus.

After following along the curved layers in the scan, researchers then virtually flatten the scrolls and explore them using advanced AI that has been trained to identify ink on the page.

There have been numerous developments in recent years but this latest one — announced at a conference in Naples, Italy on Thursday — is a “historic breakthrough,” according to those involved.

For the first time, scientists have succeeded in fully unwrapping one scroll, revealing an area measuring almost 1.5 meters (4.9 feet) of text across 20 columns.

“For nearly two millennia, many of these texts have been physically preserved but intellectually inaccessible,” Seales said in a statement published on Thursday. “Today — after years of interdisciplinary work combining advanced imaging, artificial intelligence (AI), academic research and an innovation contest — we are finally able to read them.”

To see a photograph of the burnt scroll and to learn what experts found written in the scroll, open the link.

Categories History, Innovation, Technology

Missouri: The Voters Rebuke Their State Leaders

By dianeravitch
August 14, 2026 //
1

Missouri, the Republican-dominated legislature asked voters to pass two anti-democratic referenda. One was to restrict future referenda on constitutional amendments and limit the voice of the public. To pass, a proposed constitutional amendment would have needed a majority not only statewide, but also in each of Missouri’s eight congressional districts. One district could block an amendment supported by a statewide majority.

The other constitutional amendment would have eliminated property taxes and elevated sales taxes, a highly regressive tax system that favors the richest.

Voters said “NO” to both. By 80%. The two propositions lost in every county. Maybe Missouri voters should not keep voting for the same party every year? Maybe they should oust the scoundrels who control the legislature?

This post recounts the events and the votes.

It also includes a link to a startling story by Ray Bradbury, titled August 4, 2026. Bradbury wrote it 70 years ago. It is a story about AI before AI existed.

Categories Elections, Literature, Missouri, Technology

Miami Needs Tip-Top Schools for the Super-Wealthy, So Here Come AI and No-Excuses Schools

By dianeravitch
July 29, 2026 //
7

The Miami Herald reported on the burgeoning demand for boutique schools by billionaires moving to Florida. Why Florida? Because the state has no state income tax.

Where should a billionaire send his or her children to school? Surely not the public schools, where they would rub shoulders with kids who are from all kinds of backgrounds.

The arrival of wealth has encouraged the opening of new schools for the super-rich.

Will the super-rich be satisfied with an AI-driven school at a time when educators are becoming skeptical of the educational value of AI?

Will elite families line up to enroll their privileged children in a charter chain designed originally for impoverished children in Harlem? Will their progeny flourish in a “no excuses” setting where test scores are king?

The story says:

A controversial billionaire-backed artificial intelligence school is planting a new flag in Miami Beach.

Alpha School, which has no traditional teachers, only two hours of core learning per school day and $65,000 annual tuition, just paid $19 million for the former one-acre home of the Papillon Montessori campus at 1021 Biarritz Drive in Normandy Isle, according to Miami-Dade property records and the city of Miami Beach. Without teachers, students take part in workshops led by adults called “guides.”

The transaction closed in June. By August, Alpha Miami Beach, a K-8 school with one of the highest tuitions in Miami-Dade, is scheduled to open for the 2026-27 school year. For comparison, annual tuition at Ransom Everglades School is about $54,300, while Gulliver Prep charges about $56,000.

The three-building campus, which can accommodate as many as 250 students, has operated as a Montessori school since 1999. Property records indicate the school sold the campus after facing a foreclosure lawsuit. The complex comes with a swimming pool, hydroponic garden, koi pond and outdoor classrooms.

Alpha School Miami, which already operates a campus across from Tropical Park in west Miami-Dade, now brings its educational model to one of South Florida’s wealthiest communities.

“We are very excited and happy to support this new school,” Miami Beach Planning Director Deborah Tackett told an Alpha representative during a city meeting where the school pledged it would comply with all existing restrictions governing the property. For Miami Beach, the acquisition represents more than a real estate transaction. It also reflects a broader trend in which wealthy newcomers are fueling demand for elite schools, concierge healthcare, private clubs and other services catering to high-income families.

The school did not respond to requests for comment.

The driving force behind Alpha is billionaire software entrepreneur and principal investor Joe Liemandt of Austin, Texas, who says the company’s mission is nothing less than reinventing education through artificial intelligence. Liemandt, founder of Trilogy Software and ESW Capital, is worth $6 billion, according to Forbes.

Influx of wealth drives private school demand

The purchase of the old Montessori campus is another sign that the influx of affluent families into South Florida is reshaping not only the luxury real estate market but also the institutions that serve it.

Many of the billionaires relocating themselves or their company headquarters to the region have chosen Miami Beach as home. Finding upscale private schooling for their children has become an issue.

Ken Griffin, the billionaire founder and CEO of the hedge fund Citadel, has said South Florida needs more top-tier schools to continue attracting wealthy families to the area. He has been a leading voice in encouraging other billionaires and business leaders to move to South Florida.

Griffin, who moved from Chicago to Miami along with Citadel’s global headquarters in 2022, has donated $50 million to expand the New York-based Success Academy charter school network into South Florida.

Andy Ansin, a real estate developer and the owner of WSVN/Channel 7, is another wealthy South Floridian looking to expand private schooling in Miami-Dade.

Ansin told the Miami Herald he is in the process of purchasing land in the northeastern part of the county. He plans to work with a school operator to turn the parcel into the site of a new private school on par with Ransom Everglades and Gulliver Prep.

“We really need a top private school in the northeastern part of the county,” Ansin said. “There’s tremendous demand.”

An alum of Ransom Everglades, Ansin served on the school’s board for 15 years. During that time, Ansin said families from New York would tell him, “‘Well, we’re only going to move to Miami if our kids can get into Ransom.’” He realized Miami-Dade needed more private schools, he said.

Ansin said he cannot disclose the exact location of the site, and he does not yet know which school will operate on the site. He said he wants to partner with a well-regarded school operator, and he would be interested in a school that focuses on “modern-day learning practices,” like teaching with AI.

To the north, real estate billionaire and Miami Dolphins owner Stephen M. Ross is getting involved in private education in Palm Beach County.

Related Ross, a West Palm Beach-based real estate firm founded by Ross, recently announced it is backing a West Palm Beach campus of the prestigious Pine Crest School. The private school already has campuses in Fort Lauderdale and Boca Raton.

Alpha’s AI curriculum raises eyebrows

Alpha’s arrival in Miami Beach comes as the controversial school rapidly expands nationwide. The hallmark of Alpha’s curriculum is its use of artificial intelligence to help students master the required academic curriculum in about two hours a day, co-founder MacKenzie Price said in a school podcast on YouTube.

Price is an Austin, Texas, mother who grew disenchanted with public schools and joined forces with Liemandt to open Alpha School.

Liemandt says Alpha is unique. It combines AI with learning science to teach students about 10 times faster than traditional instruction. Under the model, students spend roughly two hours each day working with an AI tutor on core academics before shifting not to the 3Rs, but the 4Cs — critical thinking, communication, collaboration and creativity. The school does not require an admissions test.

Students take part in workshops on leadership, entrepreneurship, financial literacy, public speaking and teamwork led by their “guides.”

Ultimately, Liemandt says he hopes to create an AI-powered learning platform that can be delivered on a tablet costing less than $1,000 and reach 1 billion children worldwide. He says he has committed $1 billion to the effort.

Education experts say AI has the potential to personalize instruction. Critics, however, argue that students still benefit from traditional classroom interaction, teacher-led instruction and social learning.

Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/miami-beach/article316497031.html#storylink=cpy

Categories Billionaires, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Florida, Harlem Success Academy, Miami, Technology

Big Tech Chokes Off Popular Blogs That Challenge Them

By dianeravitch
July 28, 2026 //
13

When I first started blogging in 2012, the number of people reading the blog astounded me. Every day, between 15,000-25,000 people read what I wrote.

Most of the referrals to the blog were coming through Facebook.

Then, in 2016 or so, there was a precipitous and inexplicable drop. Something happened but I don’t know what. I know I offended some powerful people, but that was my job. I still have had more than 43 million page views since 2012, so I shouldn’t complain.

But something similar happened to Judd at Popular Information.

He writes:

“Here are the facts:

In 2021, 34,594 people subscribed to Popular Information after seeing our reporting on Google, Facebook, and Twitter (now X).

We are more than halfway through 2026, and just 932 people have subscribed to Popular Information from those same platforms.

“Our work is better than it was five years ago. (We were recently awarded the David Nyhan Prize for Public Policy Journalism by Harvard’s Shorenstein Center.)

“But the billionaires who control Google, Facebook, and X have made the decision to choke off traffic to independent outlets like Popular Information. They are not interested in building an audience for stories like the one you are about to read.”

The algorithm changed. Someone knows, but I don’t. It changed for my blog, around the time that I began opposing Trump. Now the algorithm has changed for Judd.

Here is Judd’s latest post.

https://open.substack.com/pub/popularinformation/p/the-truth-about-the-viral-911-petition?r=rls8&utm_medium=ios

Categories Education Industry, Education Reform, Personal, Technology

CNN: France Becomes First European Country to Ban Social Media for Children

By dianeravitch
July 22, 2026 //
4

CNN reports on a growing phenomenon: banning young children from social media. France is the first European nation to do so, and others are set to follow. This action reflects growing concern about the effect of social media on children’s attention span and exposure to inappropriate content.

CNN reported:

French lawmakers voted Tuesday to ban social media use for children under the age of 15, making it the first country in the European Union to introduce such an age limit.

Australia made history late last year when it implemented the first ban on social media for under-16s. The British government announced similar restrictions last month, expected to come into effect next year. Spain, Greece and Denmark are also planning to impose minimum age limits for social media use.

French lawmakers overwhelmingly voted in favor of the bill, which was strongly backedby France’s President Emmanuel Macron. He will now sign it into law.

“Social media will be banned for children under 15 starting this school year,” he posted on X after the vote as he thanked lawmakers for passing the bill.

“The brains of our children and our teenagers are not for sale,” he had said in a video message in January. “The emotions of our children and our teenagers are not for sale or to be manipulated, neither by American platforms nor by Chinese algorithms.”

Macron had ordered the French government to expedite the bill’s passage through parliament, with the aim of having legislation in place for the beginning of the new next school year in September.

It is not yet clear how the social media sites will verify users’ ages. Australia requires companies to “take reasonable steps” to prevent underage children from opening or keeping accounts, and the French government has promised to implement age controls to back up the law.

Members of the French Senate debate a draft law that aims to ban social media access for children under 15, in Paris, France, on March 31, 2026.

Members of the French Senate debate a draft law that aims to ban social media access for children under 15, in Paris, France, on March 31, 2026. Firas Abdullah/EPA/Shutterstock

Earlier versions of the legislation also included proposals for a ban on advertising promoting social media to children, including by influencers, and to require advertisements for social media platforms to carry the warning: “Dangerous products for children under 15.” However, these plans did not make it into the final bill.

The new law will be enforced by Arcom, France’s audiovisual and digital communications regulator. It is expected to apply to all the major platforms.

According to Arcom, children aged 12 to 17 in France spend an average of 1 hour and 21 minutes a day on TikTok. The regulator says the platform’s recommendation algorithm tends to promote the most “extreme” content, exposing teenagers to a continuous stream of anxiety-inducing or otherwise harmful videos.

Social media companies say they already take steps to protect children from some kinds of content.

‘Real change of atmosphere’

The proposal for a ban was welcomed by many French parents earlier this year.

“I think it’s great,” mother-of-six Geraldine Delacroix told CNN in March. “Now I’m waiting to see how it’s workable, but in any case, it’s better than nothing,” she added, noting that children could often get around existing parental controls. “Even if we block, they find ways to get around it,” she said.

In her work as a pediatrician, Delacroix has seen a growing distrust of smartphones and social media over the past decade among her patients’ families. “People are tense (about smartphones),” she said. “There’s been a real change of atmosphere.”

To finish reading the article, open the link.

Categories Childhood, Technology
« Older Entries