Students at one of the city’s best-known arts high schools walked out of class Tuesday afternoon, and for some of them, the frustration started with the posters for their own school’s talent show.
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Nearly 100 students at LaGuardia High School, the school that inspired “Fame,” left their Upper West Side building at noon and marched across 65th Street to Lincoln Center to demand a freeze on artificial intelligence, the NY Daily News reported.The LaGuardia protest was part of a national day of walkouts at high schools and colleges under the banner of the National Walkout to Freeze AI. The campaign says AI development shouldn’t advance until the public has a real say in it and real safety guardrails are in place. Other New York participants included Fordham University, SUNY Purchase and Stony Brook, according to the Daily News.
Students told the paper that AI has already found its way into LaGuardia. Some accused the LaGuardia Parents Association of using AI-generated posters for school events, including Rising Stars, the annual talent show and fundraiser, instead of art made by students. A senior and singer-songwriter identified as V.V. said the association has been making posters with Canva AI and ChatGPT even though the school has students dedicated to that kind of work.
Sophomore Tobin Sorbello said that free materials from a national student-belonging campaign the school recently took part in included AI-generated music, which upset a lot of students. Sorbello hopes to become a professional film composer, and he told the Daily News he worries that directors and producers for TV and film can now simply turn to AI instead.
Senior Mieke Nievergelt said it’s telling that students are the ones protesting while adults and administrators are the ones bringing AI into schools. Adults, she argued, don’t understand the effect it has on young minds because they had time to develop their own thinking without it.
Last month, Mayor Mamdani and Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels put a one-year pause on generative AI for students through eighth grade. High schools play by different rules. Principals can apply to join one of five pre-approved AI pilot programs or offer AI as part of career training, and every high school student has to complete AI literacy training, with extra hours for students in the pilots.
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Sorbello said he’s grateful for the pause in the younger grades, noting he has two siblings in the system who no longer have access to AI. But he said high schoolers who tell him they use AI for schoolwork just aren’t learning.Samuels has defended treating high schoolers differently, saying when he announced the guidance that AI is increasingly part of the world and workforce they’re about to enter.
Spokespeople for the schools where students walked out didn’t immediately respond to the Daily News’s request for comment.
Sophomore Alexandre Rollin-Dijkhuis, a member of the school writing club, said he had a story published six months ago alongside work by several classmates, and that readers can tell those stories reflect the students who wrote them. “Everybody has a story. Do not let generative AI write yours,” he said.
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