# Mamdani to New York City kids: No AI until high school > Source: > Published: 2026-09-02 17:19:06+00:00 He might be the second-youngest mayor in New York City history, but 34-year-old Mayor Zohran Mamdani didn’t have AI in school, and he wants to make sure city kids don’t either. The digital-native politician, who said he doesn’t use AI himself, announced on Wednesday alongside Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels a one-year moratorium on student-facing generative AI for children in 2-K through eighth grade, covering nearly 600,000 students in the country’s largest public school system and banning companion chatbots across every grade. “The tech industry wants us to believe that AI in early education is not only inevitable, but that it is necessary. We do not see it that way,” Mamdani said at a news conference announcing the ban. “I have yet to see a study showing that AI is beneficial for students in elementary and middle school, with the exception, of course, of research sponsored by the very corporations that stand to profit.” City Hall is calling it the most expansive student-facing AI policy in the country. “The tech industry wants us to believe that A.I.-powered early education is not only inevitable, but necessary. We do not see it that way,” Mamdani said in a [statement](https://www.nyc.gov/mayors-office/news/2026/09/mayor-mamdani-and-chancellor-samuels-put-students-first-with-nat) announcing the policy, and at the conference, he added that the city would “embrace new technology, but only when it serves our students.” “Kids need to learn to think for themselves, they need to work alongside their peers, they need to learn how to ask better questions, and they need to learn what it feels like to not know the answer,” Mamdani said. “This is what learning is all about, and it is what city government is determined to protect.” But back in April, [over 250 education experts exclusively told Fortune they were calling ](https://fortune.com/2026/04/16/doctors-experts-ai-moratorium-schools/)on the mayor to instill a five-year moratorium. At the time, the city’s AI guidance for schools was still the permissive “traffic light” version, which sorted AI uses into barred, cautioned, and allowed categories but left student use it in a vague, use-with-caution middle tier. Leonie Haimson of the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy at the time told *Fortune*: “He said he himself doesn’t use AI, which is good, but why is he foisting it on New York City public school students?” Now, the city’s policy is stuck between two worlds: education advocates are asking for more, while proponents of the AI believe a moratorium even of one year will adversely affect students. ## The ask and the outcome In April, when that coalition of more than 250 doctors, child development experts and advocacy organizations called for a five-year moratorium on generative AI in pre-K through 12 schools, the worry was about teaching kids how to learn. “We just don’t want to waste another 10 years in which our kids’ education is undermined,” Haimson said. “It took more than 10 years to ban cell phones from schools. We can’t afford that again.” Two months later, a majority of the City Council signed a letter asking Mamdani and Samuels to “immediately pause” AI in schools for two years, citing risks to student privacy and critical thinking. Parents, teachers and artists rallied at City Hall over the summer pushing the same two-year figure. The administration landed on one year on Wednesday. Fairplay, a child advocacy group that led the coalition back in April, released a [statement](https://fairplayforkids.org/statement-on-nyc-public-schools-ai-policy/) following the mayor’s moratorium announcement, in which Campaign Director David Monahan called the policy “a step in the right direction” that nonetheless “raises serious concerns.” “AIM has been saying all along that New York City Public Schools need a two-year pause on AI to craft the most democratic and durable policy for students and the community,” Monahan said, using the coalition’s own name for itself, the AI Moratorium for NYC Schools. “It’s not too late to heed their call.” In April, a DOE spokesperson told *Fortune*: “We know we must design educational spaces that never lose sight of original thinking or human-centered learning while advancing AI literacy safely and responsibly.” This week, Samuels used nearly identical framing: “We’re standing firmly in our belief that innovation does not mean more technology.” Samuels later acknowledged the March policy “missed the mark,” and Wednesday’s one-year moratorium replaced it, five months on. ## The case against the pause Not everyone thinks a moratorium is the right call. The most visible pushback comes from Bill Ackman, the hedge fund manager behind Pershing Square Capital Management, who has spent the past year [promoting](https://x.com/BillAckman/status/1958141989699883045) Alpha School, a private network that condenses academic instruction into two hours a day using AI tutoring software and has a campus a few blocks from City Hall. Ackman has called it ‘the first truly breakthrough innovation in K-12 education’ since KIPP Academy, arguing that classrooms ‘haven’t fundamentally changed in 200 years’ while AI is transforming everything else. He’s not alone. More than 250 CEOs—including the heads of [Microsoft](https://fortune.com/company/microsoft/), [Adobe](https://fortune.com/company/adobe-systems/), Dell, [AMD](https://fortune.com/company/advanced-micro-devices/) and IBM—signed an open [letter](https://csforall.org/en-US/unlock8/open-letter) through the nonprofit CSforAll’s Unlock8 campaign calling for mandatory computer science and AI education in every U.S. high school, arguing that early, universal exposure is what prevents a widening skills gap rather than causes one. “In the age of AI, we must prepare our children for the future—to be AI creators, not just consumers,” the letter states. President Trump [signed](https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/advancing-artificial-intelligence-education-for-american-youth/) a related executive order in April 2025 directing federal agencies to expand AI training grants and classroom resources for K-12 students, framing early AI literacy as a matter of economic competitiveness. That argument surfaced inside Mamdani’s own announcement. Julie Samuels, president and CEO of the tech industry group Tech:NYC, was one of the outside voices quoted in the city’s press release, and her praise came with a pointed caveat: citing a [CBRE](https://fortune.com/company/cbre-group/) [report](https://www.cbre.com/insights/books/scoring-tech-talent-2026) showing New York now has more tech jobs than the Bay Area, she said the city should “expand this access beyond one hour per week in the future” for high schoolers using AI career-readiness tools, rather than treat exposure to the technology as something to ration. Even the mayor addressed the city’s decision to allow AI in schools—but only for high schoolers. “Whether we like it or not, our teenagers are growing up in an AI-saturated world. We cannot pretend that that world does not exist. It would be irresponsible not to prepare our children for the fast-evolving technological future that lies ahead,” Mamdani said at the conference. “So, in high school we will teach our students about AI, its opportunities and its pitfalls, its building blocks and its biases.” “But I want to be very clear: In no way, shape or form will AI replace student-teacher interaction,” he said. “It is the foundation of our students’ educational experience. That will not change.” It’s also not the first time the city’s own school system has made the workforce-readiness case for AI over caution. In 2023, then-Chancellor David Banks reversed an earlier ChatGPT ban, writing in a [Chalkbeat](https://www.chalkbeat.org/newyork/2023/5/18/23727942/chatgpt-nyc-schools-david-banks/) op-ed that the “knee-jerk fear and risk overlooked the potential of generative AI to support students and teachers” and that students would enter a workforce where understanding the technology was essential. ## A few miles away, a different bet Just a few miles from the Brooklyn school where Mamdani made the announcement is the Alpha School, a private network at 180 Maiden Lane in the Financial District, which condenses academic instruction into two hours a day using AI-driven tutoring software, then spends the rest of the school day on workshops—leadership, entrepreneurship, life skills. There’s no homework. Staff are called “guides.” Tuition runs close to $65,000 a year. Alpha claims its students rank in the top 1 to 2% nationally, and as a private network, It faces no requirement to report outcome data to the state, making the claims hard to independently verify. Internal documents obtained by [404 Media](https://www.404media.co/students-are-being-treated-like-guinea-pigs-inside-an-ai-powered-private-school/) earlier this year showed the network’s AI-generated lesson content included poorly structured material and illogical multiple-choice questions, [Futurism ](https://futurism.com/future-society/rich-people-education-ai-slop)reported in July. A spokesperson from Alpha told *Fortune *that Alpha’s AI-powered learning platform was built with input from learning scientists, including Carl Hendrick, a King’s College London PhD who has published on evidence-based teaching methods. Alpha’s model compresses two hours of AI-driven instruction into the morning, well above the 98-minute daily average U.S. students spend on school-issued devices. *breaks the traditional barrier between audience and newsroom. The show transforms* **Fortune Daily*** Fortune*’s trusted reporting into actionable, conversational, and entertaining insights for an emerging class of business leaders. **Watch here.**