Schools across the country have long grown dependent on Google, from its eponymous search engine to services like Gmail and Chromebooks, the company’s cheap laptops that have become commonplace in classrooms.
But it’s a fraught relationship that’s now seriously being tested as teachers start to suspect that the AI use is wreaking havoc on the impressionable minds of their students. The tech has been shown to erode young people’s critical thinking skills, cause their testing skills to plummet, and — at the extreme end — drive them into isolation and AI psychosis.
Google is now putting on brass knuckles to keep its AI in schools, saying that it’ll be unwilling to support schools that move to block AI entirely. As the New York Times reports, the tech giant is revoking access to Google Search, the most important gateway to information on the open web, for any schools looking to restrict AI.
It’s a spiteful move that could greatly deteriorate the company’s already tenuous relationship with educators. Put differently, Google is holding schools hostage by withholding its number one bargaining chip from any institution willing to say no to AI. The decision could force teachers’ and administrators’ hands as they watch AI destroy a generation of students.
Google has plastered “AI Overviews” on top of its search engine, entangling the two products. But the service’s answers are its frequently wrong, turning the very top of company’s index of the internet into a massive minefield of misinformation.
“Search and AI are deeply integrated,” Google VP of education Chris Phillips told the NYT. If a school bans AI, students “will not have access to search, and they’ll see a message from their school that indicates it’s not available.”
The company has been advertising its Gemini AI chatbot to schools as a way to help teachers and provide personalized tutors to students. It forced the AI features on classrooms earlier this year by making them the default, triggering a major outcry among educators.
The news comes as state regulators continue to ponder how to set rules for the use of AI in public education and by minors as a whole. Several school districts across New York and California have restricted some of these features on school devices, with the hopes of regaining access to traditional search without AI Overviews.
But that option no longer appears to be on the table as Google looks to force AI into classrooms. The company announced this week that schools can either choose to have search with AI Overviews turned on — or a student-oriented version of its Gemini chatbot, called Guided Learning.
Those two options are unlikely to get a glowing reception from frustrated educators looking to protect children from the many harmful effects of AI.
More on AI in education: The Tech Industry’s Aggressive Push to Integrate AI Into Schools Is Turning Into a Disaster