This seems performative to me, and this paragraph gets at why I think so:

AI companies are increasingly pushing into education — perhaps in part to try and fight the reputation that AI tools have acquired that they help students cheat. Features like Gemini’s guided learning mode and ChatGPT’s similar study mode, which was announced last week, could theoretically help with actual learning, but the question is whether students will want to use these modes instead of just using the AI chatbots for easy answers.

So, first, Google and OpenAI (and everyone else) want to get into education because it’s profitable. They can get lots of money from university partnerships and even more from winning over future customers. Second, that last question is really important: Will the students using generative AI switch to a study mode? Or is this a fig leaf that allows these companies to demonstrate how educational they are so that they can make those profits?

• Google
• OpenAI
• edtech
• generative AI