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Microsoft seeding Washington schools with free AI to get kids and teachers hooked
https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/14/microsoft_ai_schools/To the slop trough, kiddos!
Not content to shove Copilot into every corner of the enterprise it can think of, Microsoft has announced plans to force feed AI to students across its home state of Washington.
Microsoft president Brad Smith announced a new program called Elevate Washington last week that he described as taking advantage of an "opportunity gap" across Washington schools to ensure that every district in the state has equal access to AI tools - Microsoft's AI tools, naturally.
. . .
CDT isn't the first to point out the less-than-stellar effect AI might be having on academic development. MIT reported over the summer that its research found less brain activity among students who used AI to help them write essays, and their recall of what was written suffered as well.
Like the raft of government discount deals the Trump administration has signed since it became hell bent on adopting AI in the face of FOMO, Microsoft's Washington state AI deal comes with expiration dates, meaning districts, teachers, and students are getting a few years of free AI to decide whether it's worthwhile or not before Microsoft tries to get them to pay.
The whole program is reminiscent of earlier efforts from Microsoft and other tech giants to seed schools with technology, something Google has done to great success in the US, with Chromebooks and Google Apps serving as something of a default in many districts. But those previous products didn't come with a risk of producing hallucinatory slop and impaired reasoning.
Microsoft president Brad Smith announced a new program called Elevate Washington last week that he described as taking advantage of an "opportunity gap" across Washington schools to ensure that every district in the state has equal access to AI tools - Microsoft's AI tools, naturally.
. . .
CDT isn't the first to point out the less-than-stellar effect AI might be having on academic development. MIT reported over the summer that its research found less brain activity among students who used AI to help them write essays, and their recall of what was written suffered as well.
Like the raft of government discount deals the Trump administration has signed since it became hell bent on adopting AI in the face of FOMO, Microsoft's Washington state AI deal comes with expiration dates, meaning districts, teachers, and students are getting a few years of free AI to decide whether it's worthwhile or not before Microsoft tries to get them to pay.
The whole program is reminiscent of earlier efforts from Microsoft and other tech giants to seed schools with technology, something Google has done to great success in the US, with Chromebooks and Google Apps serving as something of a default in many districts. But those previous products didn't come with a risk of producing hallucinatory slop and impaired reasoning.