Facing a backlash to AI in schools, Google promises changes and draws one hard line in the sand - Chalkbeat

By Google News AI · 2026-11-03T15:54:00+01:00

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It’s one of the biggest problems with AI and education: Students can present a chatbot with any question, from the volume of a cylinder to the causes of the Civil War, and get back fully formed answers that are mostly correct.

“By default, we train AI models to be helpful assistants that can do the work for the user,” said Kevin McKee, a research scientist at Google DeepMind, part of the tech giant’s AI for Education research team. “But in education, in contrast, students need to do the work themselves in order to learn. Good pedagogy requires guiding students through that productive struggle.”

One of those “helpful assistants,” Google’s Gemini, is available to many American students on school-issued laptops. But now the company is rolling out changes that it says will push students to do their own work and have Gemini serve as the sort of personalized tutor that many AI boosters hope the technology can be.

These include turning off Gemini as a default setting within Google Classroom. When Gemini is turned on, it will operate in Guided Learning mode, a feature launched last year that walks students through examples and questions rather than simply providing the answer. Guided Learning will also replace AI overviews when students use Google Search on school accounts.

The goal of the updates announced Tuesday is to give schools and teachers more control and promote student thinking and learning, company officials said.

Earlier this year, Google caught many school districts off guard by turning on Gemini for all students as the default setting…

Originally published by Google News AI