Writing in Fortune, Dora Palfi, chief executive and co-founder of the education technology company imagi, argues that blocking AI in schools backfires by pushing students toward unsupervised use rather than preventing it. She describes visiting districts from Tennessee to New York and finding the same pattern, including in Hamilton County, Tennessee, where she says blocked access to ChatGPT simply sent students onto their mobile data. The bans, in her reading, change where students use the tools but not whether they use them.
Palfi sets the stakes against the labor market. She cites NACE’s 2026 Job Outlook Survey reporting that more than a third of entry-level positions require AI skills, and Stanford’s AI Index finding that four of five students already use AI for schoolwork. Yet only 6 percent of teachers, by the Stanford figure she references, describe their school’s AI policy as clear, a gap she treats as evidence that guidance has not kept pace with behavior.
The adoption curve, in her account, leaves little time to adjust. She notes that 40 percent of U.S. adults tried ChatGPT within two years of its release, against roughly twelve years for comparable personal-computer adoption. Over a similar period, she writes, global K-12 edtech funding fell 82 percent, which she frames as schools pulling back just as the technology sped up.
Palfi acknowledges the worries driving the restrictions. She points to an NBC survey in which 86 percent of psychiatrists said they feared AI could inhibit teen brain development, while 64 percent believed children can learn effectively from personalized AI platforms. She adds College Board figures showing 85 percent of administrators value AI education even as 45 percent restrict classroom access, a contradiction she treats as the core policy failure.
Her alternative is to have students build with AI rather than only consume it. She offers the example of a 14-year-old in Texas who built an application to screen for heart disease, presenting it as what becomes possible when children develop alongside the tools. Across more than 13,000 U.S. school districts, Palfi argues, the real question is not whether students will meet AI but whether adults will be in the room when they do.
