Blue books won’t save our children from AI

When my daughters’ teachers began offering only in-class hand-written exams, I initially thought it was a brilliant strategy to AI- proof education.

Then I began to question whether that is good or bad.

As a parent, part of me loves old-school blue books. They create one of the few remaining spaces where students must think without machine assistance. But part of me wonders whether that is a necessary safeguard or a quaint anachronism, given the exponential future our children are graduating into.

Blue books may tell us whether students can write without AI. But they do not answer the harder question: What is the purpose of public education when every child has near-infinite knowledge and intelligence in their pocket?

That’s a question that parents and educators across the country are grappling with in real time — with no guidance or guardrails from the federal government. That question also cuts to the fundamental issue of whether AI will ultimately serve humanity, or the other way around.

The 2028 campaign will be the first real AI presidential election and may be the last chance to enact human-centric federal regulations for AI before it’s too late to put the toothpaste back in the tube.

That means rules to protect children, preserve human agency and work, and safeguard the public from increasingly powerful models with destructive potential.

It also includes reauthorizing the now ironically named Every Student Succeeds Act to reimagine America’s education system for the AI economy. Any AI-era reauthorization of this law should fully fund and hold........

© The Hill