A pedestrian walks past a San Francisco Unified School District office building in San Francisco, Thursday, Feb. 3, 2022.

The Bay Area builds much of the world’s artificial intelligence. San Francisco’s public schools still have no policy for it.

The San Francisco Unified School District’s guidance on AI is a resource page. Individual schools and teachers need to decide how to handle devices. At the same time, the district has made Amira, an AI reading tutor, central to its early literacy work, and is bringing it to more elementary classrooms. The San Francisco Board of Education plans to vote on a technology policy in March. Three of its seven seats are on the ballot Nov. 3, so whoever wins will have a say in that policy. 

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Other districts have already decided, if somewhat temporarily. New York City barred students through eighth grade from using generative AI for a year. Los Angeles has blocked AI sites on school-issued devices through 2027. Parents and educators here are petitioning for a moratorium of their own. 

I understand the instinct. I was trained to think before I was trained to build. As an aerospace........

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