Brookings fellows urge schools to ban student generative AI

Two Brookings-affiliated scholars want schools to prohibit students from using generative AI for essays, homework and coding projects, writing in TechPolicy.Press that the ban should hold until research establishes what the technology does to learning.

The op-ed, dated November 11, is signed by Sorelle Friedler, a computer science professor at Haverford College and chair of the ACM's U.S. Technology Policy Committee, and Nicol Turner Lee, who directs the Center for Technology Innovation at the Brookings Institution. They would keep AI inside dedicated courses where students "critique and understand AI's impact on society."

The authors' core claim about learning sits in one sentence. "Critical thinking skills, writing abilities, problem solving ideas and other competencies are gained through the process of writing essays, solving math problems and evaluating various scenarios," they write, "not just by reaching the correct outcome." They point to what they call a "junior-year wall" in higher education, where students who leaned on AI coding tools in introductory courses later struggle with more advanced assignments.

On equity, the piece rejects the usual framing of AI access as a leveller. "Equity should be about ubiquitous access to these tools and ensuring that less wealthy students are equally protected from the potential misuse of technology," the authors write, drawing a line to historical patterns in which working-class students were tracked into worker-focused education while wealthier peers were prepared for leadership.

Their stakes argument reaches past the labor market: the piece ties classroom AI use to whether students develop their own views, framing unexamined AI dependence as a risk to "global democratic backsliding."