The American Federation of Teachers, the second-largest US teachers' union, says it will open an AI training hub with $23M from Microsoft, OpenAI, and Anthropic
The American Federation of Teachers said it would use the $23 million, including $500,000 from the A.I. start-up Anthropic, to create a national training center.
New York TimesNatasha Singer
Context & Ripple Effects
The funding extends an existing vendor-backed AI-literacy effort: the AI Education Project had already assembled support from Microsoft, Google and OpenAI for resources aimed at low-income schools.
It also fits a widening push to embed AI training in education. Subsequent coverage described tech-company partnerships with major teachers’ unions amid broader AI adoption across US schools and colleges.
First-order effects
AFT can establish a national training center, giving its members a union-led channel for AI instruction rather than leaving training solely to school districts or vendors.
Microsoft, OpenAI and Anthropic gain a formal route to support educator capability-building through one of the country’s largest teacher organizations.
Second-order effects
Districts and teachers that engage with the hub may become better positioned to assess, pilot and govern classroom AI tools, increasing pressure on other providers to pair products with educator training and support.
The shared funding model puts competing AI vendors alongside one another in a single educator initiative, making training quality and practical classroom usefulness a more important point of competition than model access alone.
Third-order effects
If such partnerships proliferate, AI adoption in education may be shaped increasingly by organized educator training programs, not just district-by-district software procurement.
Vendor-funded training can accelerate AI literacy while raising a durable governance question: whether educator development remains sufficiently independent of the companies seeking a foothold in schools.
The trend: AI companies are moving beyond selling tools to funding the institutions and training channels that determine how those tools are adopted in education.
I think it's noteworthy that all three AI competitors are willing to lay down their weapons to go after their shared enemy: humans reading and writing for themselves [embedded post]
The AFT's decision to lean in to AI training is gross and fundamentally threatens the very tenets of education and the workers that the AFT professes to protect. — I'm even more pleased that West Virginia Campus Workers voted last month to disaffiliate from the AFT-A (for diffe…
Today is an embarrassing day for @aft.org, @uftnyc.bsky.social, and for the labor movement. Instead of supporting teachers' opposition to the use of AI to manage or do the work of teachers, they're getting $ from EdTech to introduce AI to young people. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/08…
On the one hand, the quote below. On the other: “Microsoft will provide $12.5 million for the A.I. training effort over the next five years.” www.nytimes.com/2025/07/08/t... [image]
This is a profoundly bad idea @aft.org Your membership has broad expertise about AI, from a variety of perspectives. Taking money from organizations opposed to the very existence of labor, like OpenAI, is not the way to do AI prep www.nytimes.com/2025/07/08/t...
This will be an innovative new training space where educators will learn not just about how A.I. works, but how to use it wisely, safely and ethically. It will be a place where tech developers and educators can talk with each other, not past each other. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/0…
It's almost as if use cases aren't popping up organically and the AI co's are having to find creative ways to insert their products into people's workflows [embedded post]
“The New York hub will be ‘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...It will be a place where tech developers and educators can talk with each other, not past each ot…
Opened this hoping that it would be about teaching given the presence of AI or even how students can use AI critically but no: “starting with hands-on workshops for teachers this fall on how to use A.I. tools for tasks like generating lesson plans.” — Bad move @aft.org and @rwe…
Today is an embarrassing day for @AFTunion, @UFT, and the labor movement. Instead of supporting teachers' opposition to the use of AI to manage or do the work of teachers, they're getting $ from EdTech to incorporate AI into schools. https://www.nytimes.com/...
This just in: The tech industry drive to A.I.-fy schools is accelerating. The American Federation of Teachers plans to open an artificial intelligence training hub for teachers in NYC — backed by $23 million from OpenAI, Microsoft and Anthropic. https://www.nytimes.com/...