An Open Letter on AI from Teachers

Our Children Are Watching

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We are teachers in a small computer science high school in the South Bronx. We are not tech CEOs, or experts in machine learning; we don’t have lobbyists or a list of AI policy recommendations.

But, as teachers, we are experts in caring for and listening to children. As teachers in a computer science school, we are also experts at teaching young people to use technology to improve their own lives and the world. We’re used to seeing our students eager to learn and create with new technology.

We have been listening to our young people and talking with them about AI, and we are not hearing enthusiasm. We are hearing fear and anxiety. Our children are worried that we adults don’t know what we’re doing.

They are right to be worried. We tell children to study hard to get a good job while the headlines fill with predictions of AI replacing white-collar work. We tell them to learn new technology when the engineers building the most powerful AI systems don’t fully understand their own creation. We encourage our children to be engaged citizens, even as we entrust our future and theirs to a handful of private companies.

Our young people have even more at stake in what happens next than we do. Whether AI is a blessing or a curse, they will live their whole lives in the new world we are creating.

So, on our students’ behalf, we ask the following:

To our elected representatives in the House and Senate, you must regulate AI development and its impact on jobs, and include testimony from young people, parents, and teachers as you do it. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It does have to start somewhere. Our children are watching what we do next.

To our fellow educators, if you share our concern for the future and for all of our students, sign on to this letter, and share it with your colleagues and elected representatives.

Whatever happens next, we will keep working with our students to prepare for the world as it is, and to build the world as it should be. We hope our colleagues and our Congress will join us in that work.

The Faculty of Comp Sci High
Bronx, NY
September 2026

Read and sign the letter at https://openletter.compscihigh.org

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