Google Put AI in Schools. Test Scores Plummeted.

Ryan Knutson (0:05)

Can you introduce yourself, please?

Shalini Ramachandran (0:08)

Yes, I'm Shalini Ramachandran, and I'm an investigative reporter at The Wall Street Journal.

Ryan Knutson (0:13)

And as a parent, I feel like you have just been exploding my brain over and over again with your investigations into what's going on with kids in schools this year.

Shalini Ramachandran (0:25)

Well, thank you. It's been exploding my brain too.

And when I think there's something there, it ends up being far crazier than I imagined when I actually talked to a bunch of parents and teachers and clinicians. But yeah, my brain is also exploding.

Ryan Knutson (0:41)

So what are you going to explode our brains with today?

Shalini Ramachandran (0:43)

Earlier this year, I did a big investigation about how YouTube had taken over the American classroom. And the process just understood in a much broader way how Google had sort of trained its eyes on children in schools as like a really important critical audience.

Ryan Knutson (1:02)

Shalini has been reporting about how deeply embedded Google has become in our nation's schools. From pushing the benefits of Chromebooks to helping make YouTube a cornerstone of lesson plans.

Shalini Ramachandran (1:12)

And now, as it's really become sort of deeply enmeshed in American education, it has really pushed out its AI tools to children.

Ryan Knutson (1:23)

So, how did this aspect of the story, the fact that Google's Gemini AI is now in front of every student in America just about, how did that get on your radar? When did you notice that?

Shalini Ramachandran (1:35)

Well, it was kind of as I was talking to parents, I kept hearing like, have you noticed that the kids are just plopping all of their answers into the Google search bar and getting AI answers? Because Google search has this AI mode, AI overviews and an AI mode chatbot.

Ryan Knutson (1:52)

As Google has become more ubiquitous in the classroom, its AI, called Gemini, is now everywhere. Google says this is a big advantage for students, that AI has the potential to enhance education, and that introducing students to AI early is a good way to prepare them for the future.

Not everyone is so sure about that.

Shalini Ramachandran (2:13)

So parents and teachers are really worried that this rollout has helped push many students to become academically and emotionally dependent on AI. And students have talked about it to me, and they've talked about the struggle to come up with the first sentence, struggle to brainstorm and think of an idea, because they're so used to sort of farming out their thinking to AI.

Ryan Knutson (2:40)

Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, power. I'm Ryan Knutson. It's Monday, October 5th.

Coming up on the show, how America's students got hooked on Google's AI.

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This episode is supported by Anthropic, the public benefit corporation behind Claude. People have hard questions about AI.

What happens to jobs? Whether their kids end up better off? Anthropic asked over a hundred thousand people their thoughts on AI and is tracking, in public, what it does about them and where they might not have the answer just yet. There's hope in hard questions. Ask yours at claude.ai/thejournal.

Ryan Knutson (4:12)

In the early 2010s, as schools were looking to bring technology into the classroom, Google had the perfect product to offer them. A lightweight and expensive laptop.

Shalini Ramachandran (4:22)

Chromebooks were like, this is simple and low-cost. And they pushed it out to schools, and they said this has the promise of being able to personalize learning.

Ryan Knutson (4:30)

And at this time also, this was kind of like widely considered to be a good thing by most parents and teachers in schools of like, we got to get technology to the classroom, technology is the future, we need internet access, you know, let's modernize.

Shalini Ramachandran (4:43)

That's right. And there was a lot of talk at the time about the homework gap and digital divide and like, the kids who are lower income not being able to have access to these devices. So it was seen as a good thing and it was encouraged by regulators, by politicians, all of that. And as that happened, Chromebooks became even more enmeshed into schools because the teachers felt that, well, we got to make sure the kids like know how to use this thing and are familiar with it.