谷歌周二上午宣布，将默认关闭使用该科技巨头教育软件的学校中学生的 AI 产品。但那些放弃其 AI 服务的学校也将被切断与谷歌搜索的连接。此举是在倡导团体和参议员对谷歌 AI 服务在课堂上的普及提出越来越多批评之后采取的。直到周二，其 AI 产品——以 Gemini 品牌推出——对于使用 Google Classroom 的学校是自动激活的。
Google announced Tuesday morning that it would switch off AI products by default for students in schools that use the technology giant’s education software. But those schools that forgo its AI services would also be cut off from Google Search. The move comes after mounting criticism from advocacy groups and senators about the spread of Google’s AI services available in classrooms. Until Tuesday, its AI products — branded under the Gemini moniker — were automatically activated for schools using Google Classroom.
谷歌表示，周二的这一举措也将切断学生使用谷歌搜索的权限，如果学校不启用 Gemini，鉴于 AI 在该公司搜索产品中的融合程度日益加深。谷歌教育副总裁兼总经理克里斯·菲利普斯在宣布这一变化的博客文章中表示，Gemini、Gemini Notebook、Classroom 中的 Gemini 以及谷歌搜索的访问权限“将完全关闭，针对 K-12 学生账户，直到学校管理员明确将其开启”。
Google said Tuesday’s move would also cut off students’ access to Google Search if schools do not enable Gemini, given AI’s growing integration in the company’s search products. Chris Phillips, Google’s vice president and general manager of education, stated in a blog post announcing the change that access to Gemini, Gemini Notebook, Gemini in Classroom and Google Search “will be entirely off for K-12 student accounts until school administrators explicitly turn them on.”
菲利普斯写道：“我们认为学校应该控制其课堂中的 AI，并为管理员提供控制权以帮助他们管理其方法。”一些教育和技术倡导者立即抨击这一决定，将其描绘为对不使用谷歌 AI 的学校的一种惩罚。“谷歌将商业利益置于我们孩子的教育之上，这令人遗憾，”美国教师联合会主席兰迪·温加滕表示，该组织是一个全国性的教育工作者工会。
“We believe schools should have control over AI in their classrooms and in providing administrators with controls to help them manage their approach,” Phillips wrote. Some education and technology advocates immediately slammed the decision, painting the move as a punishment for schools that don’t use Google’s AI. “It is unfortunate that Google has prioritized its business interests over the education of our children,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, a national educators union.
“它没有与教师和家长合作以维护隐私并确保其工具安全且有用，而是因噎废食，完全禁止使用这些工具，”她在给 NBC 新闻的书面评论中说道。
“Instead of working with teachers and parents to uphold privacy and ensure their tools are safe and useful, it throws the baby out with the bathwater and bans access to the tools altogether,” she told NBC News in written comments.
倡导组织 Fairplay 执行总监 Josh Golin 在一份声明中表示，谷歌正试图“强迫学校使用其 AI 产品”。“学校应利用这一机会，帮助学生寻找更能保护隐私的搜索替代方案，以及超越‘搜索和点击’进行更实质性研究的方法，”Golin 说。
Josh Golin, executive director of advocacy group Fairplay, said in a statement that Google is attempting “to strong-arm schools into using its AI products.”“Schools should use this opportunity to help students find more privacy-protective alternatives for search, as well as ways to do more substantive research beyond search and click,” Golin said.
今年早些时候，谷歌在其 Classroom 应用中启用了 Gemini，允许儿童——不论年龄大小——使用 AI 产品，除非学区将其禁用。家长倡导团体和校园技术应用专家谴责谷歌向儿童提供 AI 产品——他们担心学生会在校用设备上将作业外包给 AI 系统——并游说学区禁用 Gemini 产品。10 月初的一封公开信中，包括数字童年研究所和“无屏学校”在内的十三个主要家长倡导组织呼吁学区关闭对 Gemini 和 YouTube 的访问权限，后者同样归谷歌所有。
Earlier this year, Google turned on Gemini in its Classroom app, allowing children — regardless of age — to access AI products unless districts disabled it. Parent advocacy groups and experts on the use of technology in schools denounced Google for providing AI products to children — raising concern that students would outsource their work to AI systems on school devices — and lobbied school districts to disable Gemini products. In an open letter from early October, thirteen leading parent advocacy organizations — including the Digital Childhood Institute and Schools Beyond Screens — called on school districts to turn off access to Gemini and YouTube, which is also owned by Google.
在过去 15 年里，谷歌在教育科技领域确立了主导地位。绝大多数 Chromebook 笔记本电脑由学区采购分发给学生。根据公司 Schoolytics 2023 年的一份报告，近三分之二的作业使用谷歌产品。今年，该公司开始为教育工作者提供为期多天的 AI 培训，课程重点在于如何化解不愿使用 AI 的教师的抵触情绪。
Google has established a dominant role in education technology over the past 15 years. The vast majority of Chromebook laptops are purchased by school districts to provide to students. Nearly two-thirds of assignments use a Google product, according to a 2023 report by the firm Schoolytics. This year, the company began offering multi-day AI trainings for educators, featuring sessions that focused on how they could mitigate pushback by teachers who don’t want to use AI.
关于教育环境中 AI 应用的研究尚未确立对学生的长期益处。根据斯坦福大学教育研究生院 SCALE 计划的说法，目前没有高质量的因果研究探究学生使用 AI 的情况。研究人员还警告称，迄今为止许多关于教育领域 AI 的研究并未衡量其是否提升了学习效果，且往往未测试 AI 辅助学习是否优于其他教学方法。
Research on AI in educational settings has not established a long-term benefit for students. There are no high-quality causal studies into student use of AI, according to the SCALE Initiative at the Stanford Graduate School of Education. Researchers have also warned that many of the studies conducted so far on AI in education didn’t measure whether it boosted learning, and often did not test whether AI-assisted learning was superior to other teaching methods.
在周二的博客文章中，谷歌表示，对于启用该公司 AI 产品的学校，这些产品现在将检测学生何时试图仅仅为了获取作业答案而使用它们。该公司称，经过重新设计的谷歌搜索将引导学生了解主题或问题并梳理相关概念，而不会直接给出答案。
In Tuesday’s blog post, Google said that for schools that enable the company’s AI products, they will now detect when a student is trying to use them just to get an answer on an assignment. A redesigned version of Google Search will instead walk students through the topic or problem and work through the concepts, without going directly to the answer, the company said.