Google thinks that will be more profitable if they force schools to use AI. They do not think "no AI in schools" talk is nonsense, they think "no AI in schools" is bad for their bottom line, somehow.
Google thinks forcing schools to use AI to fuel search will give them great cash. You have far too kind a view on what Google hopes AI will do to schools and not nearly a cynical economic one.
I've heard anecdotal stories from MS-365 users that say it feels handicapped without Copilot. One govt worker said they noticed a marked change in word spell-checking after they had to block all AI on their systems.
Studies need to be done on how very terrible, bottom 5% of schools perform with all the extra AI help Google can enable. How could they possibly do worse with it running?
The economic elite really want to dumb children down at the same time of juicing their AI numbers by bundling LLMs and searches even when they don't need to be.
A big part of this era is a shift to de-anonymizing all search, research, etc. That should be seen as its own problem separate from one's feelings about AI.
Their search engine is now integrated with Ai. So either google would need to block the search engine or the school if they don't want Ai. Take your pick.
Very narrow minded approach, why not use the tools available? Experimentation is one of the best ways to learn, breaking stuff is a great way to learn. Doesn’t mean that people won’t fall into some traps along the way, but that’s kind of the case with anything.
This is along the lines of “for responsible parenting, never let your kids out of sight”.
Yes, doing things by hand is another thing to prioritize.
A good deal of research shows that most learning happens when you recognize and back off from an incorrect solution on your own, without outside guidance. So, the key to a good learning environment is setting up scenarios where the backround information is present, and answers aren't out of reach, but there's a bit of struggle to find them.
This is also how you learn to learn, and develop grit. Grit is one of the best predictors of success.
Technology that gives answers or guides heavily is harmful to the learning process.
Its also an approach backed up by research and studdies.
I still cannot believe there are people in education that can maintain that humans under 25 arent done neurologically developing ans have issues managing distractions and that tech in the classroom is a good idea (outside of classes deliberately teaching technology)
This comes off as comically evil. Disabling the AI summaries in search results is trivial, so them refusing to do so and blocking search entirely feels like a blatant attempt at coercion. Isn't it an abuse of monopoly power?
Some results also have thumbnails. They could easily be turned off. That doesn’t mean thumbnails are a different product, or an abuse of monopoly power.
> If a school has banned A.I., he [Chris Phillips, vice president for education at Google] added, students “will not have access to search, and they’ll see a message from their school that indicates it’s not available.”
So scummy! Make it sound like the school's decision, rather than Google's.
> We believe schools should have control over AI in their classrooms and in providing administrators with controls to help them manage their approach. After listening to schools, teachers, leading researchers, and policymakers, we are now updating our approach to controls for Gemini, Gemini Notebook, Gemini in Classroom, and Google Search. Access to these products will be entirely off for K-12 student accounts until school administrators explicitly turn them on.
Google blog says search will be off by default, alongside Gemini stuff.
And NYT says they would only be able to turn search on if they enable all of the Gemini stuff. That is not mentioned explicitly on google's blog. So not _that_ clickbaity?
> … and Google Search. Access to these products will be entirely off for K-12 student accounts until school administrators explicitly turn them on.
So yeah the blog post says Google Search itself will be entirely off until being turned on. There’s nothing in this blog post to indicate whether Google Search can be turned on without also turning on Gemini. Although I hate the NYT, the NYT is quoting someone from Google saying there won’t be separate controls for Gemini and Google Search.
From the article, Google AI is deeply integrated with Google Search. So the article is correct - turning off one turns off the other.
From a privacy perspective, having all of this off by default is sensible. But only offering a basic product like Search if you opt into AI (when search as a capability does not need AI to function) - is newsworthy.
Does Google tie Gemini access for schools to their ability to train on the data and use it for ads and measurement like they have done to Android if you want to do anything halfway useful you used to do with Assistant before they killed it?
> A.I. features are now a standard part of Google’s commercially available search engine. “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.”
C'mon, it's right in the article.
The school can control AI on/off. Off means no search too.
I really don't like that my original submission "Google Will Turn Off Search for Schools That Reject A.I." from the New York Times got replaced with "Designing responsible AI for learning" PR slop from Google Corporate that doesn't even disclose this limitation.
If the mods are gonna Orwell this, at least take my name off it.
Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter.
The exception to this this where a source contains significant additional information that is not in the original source, which, as commenters have pointed out, seems to be true in this case.
Would you agree that there is a difference between "search results ranked by AI" and "Magic box that blurts out an answer"?
We do want to teach kids how to do searches, to look at and parse results and basically do "online research", right. Not just blindly trust the magic answer box?
This is great! Google search has been declining in usefulness so much, that it shouldn't be used by students anyway. And then there's the shitty ai summaries, which students definitely shouldn't have to worry about whether or not it's accurate.
Very interesting approach. Basically, you can no longer use Google Search as a way to discover and learn about a subject the old-school way.
I guess the point here is that Google thinks schools need to start using AI, and that all this "no AI in schools" talk is nonsense.
> Very interesting approach. Basically, you can no longer use Google Search as a way to discover and learn about a subject the old-school way.
If by "interesting" you mean "abusive and coercive."
> I guess the point here is that Google thinks schools need to start using AI, and that all this "no AI in schools" talk is nonsense.
Explain that more please: whose talk is "nonsense"? Google's? Parents'? Schools'?
Google thinks that will be more profitable if they force schools to use AI. They do not think "no AI in schools" talk is nonsense, they think "no AI in schools" is bad for their bottom line, somehow.
Google thinks forcing schools to use AI to fuel search will give them great cash. You have far too kind a view on what Google hopes AI will do to schools and not nearly a cynical economic one.
Of course. They have a bridge^W^WAI to sell to you.
This is attempted coercion, plain and simple.
So, win-win and more traffic for Duck Duck Go?
That's how I read it nowadays, as Google search results are in a quality going down trend.
I've heard anecdotal stories from MS-365 users that say it feels handicapped without Copilot. One govt worker said they noticed a marked change in word spell-checking after they had to block all AI on their systems.
This is great! Push more people towards DuckDuckGo, etc.
Studies need to be done on how very terrible, bottom 5% of schools perform with all the extra AI help Google can enable. How could they possibly do worse with it running?
> How could they possibly do worse with it running?
It's almost always possible to do worse.
The economic elite really want to dumb children down at the same time of juicing their AI numbers by bundling LLMs and searches even when they don't need to be.
Hopefully this will backfire and end with kids learning to use other search engines.
A big part of this era is a shift to de-anonymizing all search, research, etc. That should be seen as its own problem separate from one's feelings about AI.
It will be interesting to see what search engine students start using. I still use Google because that's what I used at school.
I think that's the largest shortsightedness of google's choice.
All those kids will get used to whatever other search they can use.
How is this not monopolistic behavior?
Their search engine is now integrated with Ai. So either google would need to block the search engine or the school if they don't want Ai. Take your pick.
That's the same argument Microsoft made with Internet Explorer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....
For responsibile learning, focus on pencil, paper, and books.
Very narrow minded approach, why not use the tools available? Experimentation is one of the best ways to learn, breaking stuff is a great way to learn. Doesn’t mean that people won’t fall into some traps along the way, but that’s kind of the case with anything.
This is along the lines of “for responsible parenting, never let your kids out of sight”.
> Experimentation is one of the best ways to learn, breaking stuff is a great way to learn.
Breaking stuff sometimes is a way to learn "don't break that".
Broken children can be tough to fix.
Yes, doing things by hand is another thing to prioritize.
A good deal of research shows that most learning happens when you recognize and back off from an incorrect solution on your own, without outside guidance. So, the key to a good learning environment is setting up scenarios where the backround information is present, and answers aren't out of reach, but there's a bit of struggle to find them.
This is also how you learn to learn, and develop grit. Grit is one of the best predictors of success.
Technology that gives answers or guides heavily is harmful to the learning process.
Its also an approach backed up by research and studdies. I still cannot believe there are people in education that can maintain that humans under 25 arent done neurologically developing ans have issues managing distractions and that tech in the classroom is a good idea (outside of classes deliberately teaching technology)
good riddance. it is useless anyways
I wonder if schools will manage to filter this. Probably on windows , but I'm less sure on chromebooks.
The students can just log in with a generic Gmail account using a incognito tab.
That's often blocked on school-provided devices.
This comes off as comically evil. Disabling the AI summaries in search results is trivial, so them refusing to do so and blocking search entirely feels like a blatant attempt at coercion. Isn't it an abuse of monopoly power?
That would make sense if the AI summaries from Search were a different product.
These summaries have been trivially bolted on, they're entirely self-contained, they can be easily turned off.
Some results also have thumbnails. They could easily be turned off. That doesn’t mean thumbnails are a different product, or an abuse of monopoly power.
And sometimes they just fail to generate, while the search still shows the usual results.
> If a school has banned A.I., he [Chris Phillips, vice president for education at Google] added, students “will not have access to search, and they’ll see a message from their school that indicates it’s not available.”
So scummy! Make it sound like the school's decision, rather than Google's.
Sad to see Google's playbook become "be as evil as possible"
I know they removed "don't be evil" a while ago now, but they didn't have to immediately become the exact opposite
so what? there are alternatives... and who still googles nowadays anyways :)
[dead]
They've come a long way from 'don't be evil'
I guess it was effectively phrased in the second person.
"Don't" isn't all that far, it's just one word.
As usual, the truth is a little less clickbaity. It's just opt-in:
https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/educatio...
> We believe schools should have control over AI in their classrooms and in providing administrators with controls to help them manage their approach. After listening to schools, teachers, leading researchers, and policymakers, we are now updating our approach to controls for Gemini, Gemini Notebook, Gemini in Classroom, and Google Search. Access to these products will be entirely off for K-12 student accounts until school administrators explicitly turn them on.
Google blog says search will be off by default, alongside Gemini stuff.
And NYT says they would only be able to turn search on if they enable all of the Gemini stuff. That is not mentioned explicitly on google's blog. So not _that_ clickbaity?
> … and Google Search. Access to these products will be entirely off for K-12 student accounts until school administrators explicitly turn them on.
So yeah the blog post says Google Search itself will be entirely off until being turned on. There’s nothing in this blog post to indicate whether Google Search can be turned on without also turning on Gemini. Although I hate the NYT, the NYT is quoting someone from Google saying there won’t be separate controls for Gemini and Google Search.
From the article, Google AI is deeply integrated with Google Search. So the article is correct - turning off one turns off the other.
From a privacy perspective, having all of this off by default is sensible. But only offering a basic product like Search if you opt into AI (when search as a capability does not need AI to function) - is newsworthy.
Does Google tie Gemini access for schools to their ability to train on the data and use it for ads and measurement like they have done to Android if you want to do anything halfway useful you used to do with Assistant before they killed it?
> A.I. features are now a standard part of Google’s commercially available search engine. “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.”
C'mon, it's right in the article.
The school can control AI on/off. Off means no search too.
Well their search engine is explicitly AI-driven; no AI, no search. Like you can't have juice that doesn't contain water.
> Like you can't have juice that doesn't contain water.
This particular bit of juice didn't have the "AI summaries" ingredient for 93% of its existence.
Schools invested enormously in Google Classroom and Google for Education, and now the deal's changing. Not for the benefit of students.
the problem is that it's bundled.
you either get search + all the ai stuff, or you get none of it. you can't just opt-in to search alone.
(in other words, title is accurate. block ai = no search)
For free users: https://archive.is/20261103145613/https://www.nytimes.com/20...
The changed title on this post is problematic.
I'm not a fan of "by ceejayoz" on a link and title I never even submitted, yeah.
edit: Looks like it was undone. Thank you, whoever that was.
The changed link is even more problematic.
https://archive.ph/RuwsB
I really don't like that my original submission "Google Will Turn Off Search for Schools That Reject A.I." from the New York Times got replaced with "Designing responsible AI for learning" PR slop from Google Corporate that doesn't even disclose this limitation.
If the mods are gonna Orwell this, at least take my name off it.
edit: Thanks, mods, for putting it back.
Yeah, that is not ok at all. Flagged this post.
Yeah, that's disturbing behavior. Maybe I've been living under a rock, but I kinda assumed the mod team wouldn't blatantly whitewash like this
We were just applying the guidelines policy:
Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter.
The exception to this this where a source contains significant additional information that is not in the original source, which, as commenters have pointed out, seems to be true in this case.
[flagged]
Get "uBlock origin" bro and ads go away. Also you can click the archive link that op posted and read it there without paywall.
It isn't possible for Google to run a websearch query "without AI" and it hasn't been for over 10 years.
Would you agree that there is a difference between "search results ranked by AI" and "Magic box that blurts out an answer"?
We do want to teach kids how to do searches, to look at and parse results and basically do "online research", right. Not just blindly trust the magic answer box?
It's incredibly obtuse to pretend not to understand that people object to LLM slop, but not everything that can fall under the broad term of "AI".
What do schools need Google for anyway? Had education deteriorated this much already?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Classroom
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_for_Education
Images for a slideshow, citations for an essay, research for a project?
Yes, when I was a student I never touched Google and don't understand why anyone would need it. /s
It's true, I used AltaVista and Yahoo! search because Google didn't exist yet.
This is great! Google search has been declining in usefulness so much, that it shouldn't be used by students anyway. And then there's the shitty ai summaries, which students definitely shouldn't have to worry about whether or not it's accurate.