Teachers Union Teams Up with OpenAI, Microsoft on National AI Training Center for Educators

The American Federation of Teachers has partnered with tech companies including OpenAI, Microsoft, and Anthropic to establish a national AI training hub for educators. The union is supportive of AI in the classroom despite troubling research that shows regular usage of chatbots can impact the cognitive function of young people.

The New York Times reports that The American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the second-largest teachers’ union in the United States, has announced the creation of the National Academy for AI Instruction in New York City. The AFT says this initiative is aimed at equipping teachers with the skills and knowledge to effectively use AI tools in the classroom, and is being funded by a $23 million investment from Microsoft, OpenAI, and Anthropic.

Left-wing activist Randi Weingarten, president of the AFT, emphasized the importance of this collaboration, stating that the AI academy will serve as “an innovative new training space where school staff and teachers will learn not just about how A.I. works, but how to use it wisely, safely and ethically.” The hub, located in the United Federation of Teachers’ Manhattan headquarters, will offer hands-on workshops for educators starting this fall, focusing on tasks such as generating lesson plans using AI tools.

The funding breakdown for the five-year initiative includes $12.5 million from Microsoft, $8 million in funding and $2 million in technical resources from OpenAI, and $500,000 from Anthropic for the first year. This financial support is part of a broader push by tech companies to reshape education with generative AI chatbots, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Copilot.

While some tech executives, like OpenAI’s Chris Lehane, believe that learning to use AI should become a fundamental skill alongside reading, writing, and arithmetic, others have raised concerns about the potential risks associated with these new technologies. Brad Smith, president of Microsoft, acknowledged the need for more rigorous academic research on the effects of generative AI, citing a recent study that found outsourcing tasks to AI chatbots may hinder critical thinking.

Breitbart News recently reported on an MIT study that shows using AI tools regularly has a negative impact on the minds of users, particularly young people:

Researchers at the MIT Media Lab have discovered a potential link between the use of AI chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and cognitive decline. The findings suggest that prolonged use of the large language model (LLM) could negatively impact an individual’s critical thinking abilities, especially in younger users.

The study, led by Nataliya Kosmyna, involved dividing subjects into three groups: those using ChatGPT, those using Google’s search engine, and a “brain-only” group that relied solely on their own knowledge. Each participant’s brain activity was monitored using electroencephalography (EEG) while they wrote several SAT essays.

Union experts have also expressed concerns about the industry’s practices, such as training AI models on texts scraped from the internet without compensating creators and outsourcing data labeling to low-paid workers. Trevor Griffey, a lecturer in labor studies at UCLA, cautioned that tech firms could use AI deals with schools and unions as marketing opportunities to turn students into lifetime chatbot customers.

To address these concerns, Weingarten stated that the AFT has developed school use guidelines and aims to ensure that teachers have input on how AI tools are developed for educational use. The union’s partnership with Microsoft began last summer with a symposium in Chicago, where teachers learned chatbot basics and provided feedback on potential classroom applications. The AFT has also been working with OpenAI since Weingarten met with the company’s CEO, Sam Altman, last year.

Weingarten recently made news by abandoning the DNC despite being an ardent left-wing activist. As Breitbart News previously reported:

Weingarten, who heads the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and has been an influential member of the DNC for 23 years, wrote a letter to DNC Chair Ken Martin indicating that she is at odds with committee leadership, Politico first reported.

“While I am proud to be a Democrat, I appear to be out of step with the leadership you are forging, and I do not want to be the one who keeps questioning why we are not enlarging our tent and actively trying to engage more and more of our communities,” she wrote in a June 5 letter.

“As always, the AFT will continue to be a leader in electing pro-public education, pro-working family candidates and will be especially engaged in the 2025-26 elections,” she added.