Teachers union looks to states and industry for AI regulation absent federal action

LAS VEGAS — Leadership at one of the largest teachers unions in the U.S. anticipates that states will take action on artificial intelligence regulation across the country’s education systems before any sweeping federal legislation, leading unions to collaborate more directly with companies. 

Speaking at the AI4 conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, explained her organization’s strategy to keep AI from undermining American education. 

Absent federal guardrails for how AI can be used at an academic level, Weingarten said that near-term regulatory efforts to guide AI in the education landscape will likely be at the state level.

“I think it’s going to be state by state,” she said. “I wish it wouldn’t be. I think there has to be some state rules, because I don’t think there’s going to be any federal ones.”

Weingarten said that the AFT “fought very hard” to ensure that the 10-year moratorium on passing state AI legislation would not be included in the recent budget reconciliation bill so as to ensure some potential safeguards on AI in schools and beyond can be implemented. 

Among the causes for concern over AI in school systems, Weingarten listed chatbot security, privacy rights, deepfake content and the lack of critical thinking that AI’s prevalence in academia could instill in students as paramount fears.

“We’re concerned about safety, and we’re really concerned about people and kids’ thinking,” she said. “We’re not worried about being replaced.”

Weingarten said that, in the absence of federal laws governing AI in education, AFT went to select companies directly to foster their own baseline rules, like data privacy agreements. She also defended AFT’s recent creation of the National Academy for AI Instruction in collaboration with leading AI creators, namely OpenAI, Microsoft and Anthropic.

“We didn’t go to all the companies –– and not going to say on stage which ones we didn’t go to, obviously ––– but we chose carefully, and we chose people we thought would actually understand our values, which is: we are, as school teachers, in loco parentis for our kids,” Weingarten said. “I don’t want teachers to trip inadvertently, putting some data somewhere that actually then shows up … in Elon Musk’s DOGE machine. So that’s why we’re starting as part of this AI Institute, trying to figure out what those baselines are that we would do in terms of our community.”

AI’s impact in classrooms gained national attention following President Donald Trump’s new executive order that introduces AI at a K-12 academic level. Weingarten lambasted these efforts’ lack of followup federal funding. 

“The president wants AI to be out there, wants teachers to teach AI. There’s not one cent that has been … contributed for this, and we have a huge cut in Medicaid, in nutrition programs, in K12 programs, and teachers have not been invited to be part of this,” she said.