Some of them had no idea.
"I was kind of horrified and shocked and disappointed," Craig Garrett told BI. At a school meeting, educators revealed the extent of AI use in his daughter's classroom. It was there that Garrett learned his 5-year-old was talking to what he described as an AI chatbot every day.
That meeting "radicalized" many of the parents in the room, Garrett said.
It led him to join AIM, a coalition of New York City parents that has just pushed Mayor Zohran Mamdani to impose a one-year AI moratorium for the city's elementary and middle schools.
But AIM was not the only group lobbying Mamdani. Some parents want AI in the classroom. Proponents see a head start, not a shortcut.
Supporters say early exposure builds AI literacy for a working world increasingly intertwined with the technology. A world, as the White House envisions it, where an always-patient humanoid educator called Plato awaits.
Good for the career, perhaps. But critics worry it is bad for the brain. A neuroscientist and associate professor at Rutgers University told BI that research suggests AI tools may keep young children from developing their own problem-solving skills.
In other words, they are outsourcing skills they never sourced themselves.
The question is not whether children should encounter AI. They almost certainly will. The question is whether classrooms should introduce it before children have learned how to think without it.
We've collected some of the sharpest tech-and-business commentary on both sides. Read them here.