// ARS TECHNICA — INTELLIGENZA ARTIFICIALE
Google will let schools skip AI tools, but they have to give up search, too
Google will offer schools AI tools that purportedly don’t give away the answers.
While Google is trying to move beyond Chromebooks, the ubiquity of these devices has made the company’s education products huge in schools. Now, Google says it will let educators choose whether to allow its AI tools in the classroom. However, blocking AI tools also means giving up search, leaving schools with a difficult decision.
Google’s new overarching approach to AI in K-12 classrooms sounds good on the surface. After consulting educators, researchers, and lawmakers, Google has decided that schools using its education products will be opted out of AI tools by default. It will be up to administrators to manually enable them when these changes roll out in the coming months.
When you look at what Google considers to be an AI tool, the nature of the Faustian bargain becomes clear. The affected products are Gemini, Gemini Notebook, Gemini in Classroom, and Google Search. There’s no picking and choosing—you either allow all the AI or none of it.
This is actually consistent with Google’s approach in the consumer space. Google executives have said in no uncertain terms that Google Search is AI search. Most searches now provide an AI Overview at the top, and the company is constantly coming up with new ways to nudge people toward the conversational AI Mode chatbot function. Google sees this as the future.
In a statement to The New York Times, Google education VP Chris Phillips reiterated this approach to web search. “Search and AI are deeply integrated,” he said, adding that if a school chooses not to enable AI, the students “will not have access to search, and they’ll see a message from their school that indicates it’s not available.”
Google could make a version of search for schools that doesn’t have AI tools, but it’s not doing that. Instead, it’s creating two different versions of AI in search. When schools enable AI for student accounts, they’ll have two options: the standard Gemini-based AI and the new “Guided Learning” version. The latter, available in Classroom as well as search, is supposed to provide one-on-one tutoring and assistance without giving away all the answers. Google notes all of its generative AI products can make “mistakes,” though, so it may not be difficult to talk the chatbot into doing your homework.
Google is betting that schools won’t want to give up Google Search and will therefore accept AI tools. This will expose students to AI early and often, possibly changing the way they interact with technology. Schools that don’t like Google’s approach could switch to alternatives like DuckDuckGo, which lets you disable AI features. But will Google’s new Guided Learning be enough to assuage their concerns?