The American AI industry has a problem. In order to justify its explosive spending on AI infrastructure — data centers, essentially — firms like OpenAI and Google need to convert as many non-AI users into power users as they possibly can, ideally ones who are willing to pay monthly subscription fees for the privilege.
Much of this frenzy is unfolding at the corporate level, as AI labs chase enormous contracts with various enterprises, often leading to massive overspending and pushback from employees. Fortunately for AI companies, there’s a ready-made and untapped audience waiting to be converted into life-long users: kids, particularly ones in classrooms.
But fueling the tech industry’s quest for AI growth at all costs has come at a steep cost for students, whose formative school years are now increasingly mediated by AI chatbots. As the Wall Street Journal reported, students are well aware of the AI creeping into their classrooms and the consequences it has for their cognition — but in many cases are powerless to stem the rising tide of big tech.
“It slowed my thinking down,” Pennsylvania eighth-grader Richard Scott told the WSJ about Google’s AI assistant. “When I was in a test and I couldn’t use AI, it was hard to think.”
