OpenAI and Microsoft bankroll new AI training for teachers

The tech industry's campaign to embed artificial intelligence chatbots in classrooms is accelerating.

The American Federation of Teachers, the second-largest U.S. teachers union, said Tuesday that it would start an AI training hub for educators with $23 million in funding from three leading chatbot makers: Microsoft, OpenAI and Anthropic.

The union said it planned to open the National Academy for AI Instruction in New York City, starting with hands-on workshops for teachers this fall on how to use AI tools for tasks like generating lesson plans.


Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said the AI academy was inspired by other unions, such as the United Brotherhood of Carpenters, that have worked with industry partners to set up high-tech training centers.

The New York hub will be "an innovative new training space where school staff and teachers will learn not just about how AI works, but how to use it wisely, safely and ethically," Weingarten said in an interview.

The industry funding is part of a drive by U.S. tech companies to reshape education with generative AI chatbots. These tools, including OpenAI's ChatGPT and Microsoft's Copilot, can produce humanlike essays, research summaries and class quizzes.

In February, California State University, the largest U.S. university system, said it would provide ChatGPT for some 460,000 students. This spring, Miami-Dade County Public Schools, the third-largest U.S. school district, began rolling out Google's Gemini AI for more than 100,000 high schoolers.

The Trump administration, which recently froze nearly $7 billion in funding for schools, has called on industry to pony up for AI education. Last week, the White House urged U.S. companies and nonprofit groups to provide AI grants, technology and training materials for schools, teachers and students. Since then, dozens of companies have signed on, including Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and OpenAI.

But some researchers have warned that generative AI tools are so new in schools that there is little evidence of concrete educational benefit -- and significant concern about risk.

"I do think that there is a risk," said Brad Smith, president of Microsoft, noting that he frequently cited the critical thinking study to employees. He added that more rigorous academic research on the effects of generative AI was needed.