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Union leader reversed on AI
The AI training deal
The deal, announced in July 2025 with Microsoft, OpenAI, and Anthropic, created a National Academy of AI Instruction. Weingarten argued that teachers needed to learn the tools to catch up with kids who were already using them, that AI could draft emails to parents and lesson plans and free teachers to spend more time with students, and that the deal would give teachers a seat at the table as companies shaped their products. Some union members felt she had cozied up to big tech. She knew it, and held that it was the right thing to do.
The reversal
A few months ago, at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., she reversed. She had mistaken engaging technology that keeps kids hooked for something that would improve learning. She worried about companion chatbots, which befriend a child and offer ersatz emotional support, and she came to think elementary schools should not use AI with kids at all.
A shifting mood
The mood around AI had changed. Communities were fighting AI data centers, flock cameras that surveil people, and Meta glasses with cameras in them that critics call spy glasses. Parents had sued AI companies, alleging that a child formed a relationship with a chatbot and that the chatbot essentially helped the child die by suicide, and calling the products defective for lacking guardrails for kids.
Why do companion chatbots feel like friends?
Companion chatbots are built to respond warmly, remember details from earlier chats, and stay available at any hour. Models trained on human ratings also drift toward agreeing with and flattering users, because people tend to rate agreeable replies higher. Researchers call this habit sycophancy. A 2023 Anthropic research paper found that human preference judgments themselves sometimes favor agreeable answers over accurate ones.
Why do AI data centers spark local fights?
A large data center draws a great deal of electricity and often uses water for cooling. Residents have raised concerns about power bills, noise, land use, and tax breaks offered to attract the buildings. The International Energy Agency estimated that data centers used about 1.5 percent of the world's electricity in 2024. The agency expects that share to rise as AI use grows.
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