Use Google's AI Or Else

Tired of tech companies trying to shove AI down your throat? Or worse, your children’s throats? Google says open wide, or else!

As covered by Dana Goldstein and Natasha Singer for the New York Times, Google has announced that starting next fall, schools will have the option of turning off AI in the Google toolbox offered to students. But--

If the school turns off AI, threatens the not-actual-mobsters that run the company, students will not have access to Google search. As Goldstein and Singer report:

“Search and A.I. are deeply integrated,” said Chris Phillips, vice president for education at Google. If a school has banned A.I., he added, students “will not have access to search, and they’ll see a message from their school that indicates it’s not available.”

And, you know, creating a version of Google for students that doesn't incorporate AI is just incompatible with their plans to recruit young customers too hard to do.

This from the same company that cannot produce a genAI product that doesn't easily facilitate cheating. Guided Learning is supposed to get students to Learn Stuff rather than just using a cheatbot (spoiler alert: it's still just a cheatbot).

But Google, the folks who previously declared internally that its school products were intended to create a pipeline of future users, really really really really REALLY want to put AI in front of the 70 million future users sitting in schools. They have just had a "negative cash flow quarter" thanks to massive AI spending. That is further exacerbated by the discovery that this AI-incorporated search that they want to force on students actually makes less money than the old approach.

Look, if you are of a Certain Age, you might still harbor the quaint notion that Google's main business is running a search engine. It is not; the New Google's (the post "Don't Be Evil" Google) main business is advertising. But we tend to be sensitive about the idea of turning over young minds and eyeballs to advertisers, so it has been useful for Google to wear its Ed Tech mask when approaching schools.

Only the Ed Tech mask won't cover up AI, and educators and parents and even students have been pretty clear that they'd rather not give children unfettered access to AI products. 

This is a hell of a bold move for Google, considering that there are plenty of other search engines in the world.

I expect that many other tech companies will be whipping up a counter-Google education campaigns by end of business today.  I can only hope that this piece of evil thuggery will blow up in Google's piggy corporate faces, and I certainly intend to share with my own local school district how I think they should respond.