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points by djoldman 5 days ago | 0 comments

As usual, the truth is a little less clickbaity. It's just opt-in:

https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/educatio...

> We believe schools should have control over AI in their classrooms and in providing administrators with controls to help them manage their approach. After listening to schools, teachers, leading researchers, and policymakers, we are now updating our approach to controls for Gemini, Gemini Notebook, Gemini in Classroom, and Google Search. Access to these products will be entirely off for K-12 student accounts until school administrators explicitly turn them on.

[–] 6thbit 5 days ago

Google blog says search will be off by default, alongside Gemini stuff.

And NYT says they would only be able to turn search on if they enable all of the Gemini stuff. That is not mentioned explicitly on google's blog. So not _that_ clickbaity?

[–] kccqzy 5 days ago

> … and Google Search. Access to these products will be entirely off for K-12 student accounts until school administrators explicitly turn them on.

So yeah the blog post says Google Search itself will be entirely off until being turned on. There’s nothing in this blog post to indicate whether Google Search can be turned on without also turning on Gemini. Although I hate the NYT, the NYT is quoting someone from Google saying there won’t be separate controls for Gemini and Google Search.

[–] dan_thinks 5 days ago

From the article, Google AI is deeply integrated with Google Search. So the article is correct - turning off one turns off the other.

From a privacy perspective, having all of this off by default is sensible. But only offering a basic product like Search if you opt into AI (when search as a capability does not need AI to function) - is newsworthy.

[–] skeledrew 5 days ago

> when search as a capability does not need AI to function

That means a far less capable search engine. Note that Google search has been AI-powered since before AI became a thing; it's now just more advanced, and particularly, explicitly publicized.

[–] rockskon 4 days ago

How the sausage is made is irrelevant when the goal is to get students to research primary sources of which Google AI summaries cannot be.

[–] skeledrew 4 days ago

I remember a time when Wikipedia wasn't allowed as a source. Few years later, no problem.

[–] rockskon 4 days ago

I've never seen Wikipedia accepted as a source. Mostly I've seen the shift to recommending people look at Wikipedia's citations as sources.

[–] skeledrew 4 days ago

I've seen this OK'd in college, though the number of allowed Wikipedia citations was capped.

[–] ceejayoz 5 days ago

> A.I. features are now a standard part of Google’s commercially available search engine. “Search and A.I. are deeply integrated,” said Chris Phillips, vice president for education at Google. If a school has banned A.I., he added, students “will not have access to search, and they’ll see a message from their school that indicates it’s not available.”

C'mon, it's right in the article.

The school can control AI on/off. Off means no search too.

[–] skeledrew 5 days ago

Well their search engine is explicitly AI-driven; no AI, no search. Like you can't have juice that doesn't contain water.

[–] ceejayoz 5 days ago

> Like you can't have juice that doesn't contain water.

This particular bit of juice didn't have the "AI summaries" ingredient for 93% of its existence.

Schools invested enormously in Google Classroom and Google for Education, and now the deal's changing. Not for the benefit of students.

[–] skeledrew 5 days ago

The water supply got an update. Reservoir instead of wells. There may be a difference in taste but you'll get used to it. Or learn to dig a well.

[–] ceejayoz 5 days ago

That's more honest, but quite the goalpost move.

The local population is probably allowed to complain that you built the reservoir with toxic waste, too, or that you filled the old well with construction debris.

[–] skeledrew 4 days ago

It's not a goalpost move though, as there was never a guarantee to remain on well water.

But anyway I personally would find someone offering well water if I don't like the reservoir. And I've been using DuckDuckGo exclusively for search since they first appeared, so I've never had to deal with what Google's doing. I know the reservoir exists, but I've never drank from it.

[–] rockskon 4 days ago

> It's not a goalpost move though, as there was never a guarantee to remain on well water.

That sounds like an argument to never depend on Google for anything ever again under any circumstance short of severe punitive legislative action.

[–] nativeit 4 days ago

It’s got what plants crave.

[–] oenton 4 days ago

> Well their search engine is explicitly AI-driven; no AI, no search.

By “AI” you mean machine learning e.g. RankBrain, correct? Schools are clearly not opposed to that. Their contention is with the LLM-generated “AI summary” that sits on top of the ranked results.

Do you not understand those are two different things? That’s my most charitable conclusion. The less charitable conclusion is you are intentionally conflating generative AI (LLMs) with all machine learning, which is not how the term “AI” is used in this article or Google’s own marketing.

[–] shostack 5 days ago

Does Google tie Gemini access for schools to their ability to train on the data and use it for ads and measurement like they have done to Android if you want to do anything halfway useful you used to do with Assistant before they killed it?

[–] john_strinlai 5 days ago

the problem is that it's bundled.

you either get search + all the ai stuff, or you get none of it. you can't just opt-in to search alone.

(in other words, title is accurate. block ai = no search)

[–] insane_dreamer 5 days ago

the truth is not what you think is the truth

Search is off; if you want it back on, you get Gemini summaries with it. you can't get Search _without_ Gemini

Scummy wording makes it looks like google is giving more control, but it's really the opposite.