New York City has announced a one-year moratorium on student-facing generative AI for kids through eighth grade, affecting nearly 600,000 students. When I first read about it, I had two reactions that don’t fit together particularly neatly. First, I understand what they’re worried about, and I think some of that concern is legitimate. Second, I don’t particularly trust the government to decide how kids should be allowed to use AI.
Apparently I’m going to annoy both sides of this argument. That’s fine.
There is some interesting research starting to emerge about what happens when we use AI to take over parts of our thinking. The term researchers use is “cognitive offloading,” which sounds like something you’d do with a forklift, but it’s actually a pretty good description. We have always offloaded parts of our cognition. We write things down so we don’t have to remember them. We use calculators. We use GPS. I haven’t memorized a phone number in years, including several I probably ought to know.