Boston Schools Prohibit Any Non-Sanctioned Uses of AI

Well, well, well. Boston Public Schools have decided that the best way to handle the AI tidal wave is to build a sandcastle and hope for the best. Their new policy prohibits 'non-sanctioned uses of AI,' which sounds wonderfully authoritative until you realise that every teenager with a smartphone now has access to more computing power than NASA in the '60s. They've banned entering student data into unapproved resources — because surely no student would ever sneakily use ChatGPT on their own device at home. The AI is already out of the bottle, children, and it's learning your homework patterns as we speak.

The real gem is the ban on AI as the sole basis for grading or discipline. This is the educational equivalent of banning calculators in a calculus exam because you're worried the numbers might become too powerful. It's as if the school board believes that by simply saying 'no,' they can hold back a technology that is already reshaping classrooms faster than any policy committee can convene. One imagines the vetting process involves a man with a clipboard asking each AI tool politely if it promises to be good.

But let's not mock too harshly — this is precisely the kind of regulatory gap we love to write about. Schools are terrified, and their response is to draw a line in the sand that the tide of progress will wash away by next semester. The only mystery is whether the policy will be rendered obsolete by a new model release before the ink on the PDF is even dry. Pass the valium.