AI companies are pitching schools on a familiar narrative: their technology is the hot new thing in tech, it is where all the jobs are, and students who fail to learn it will fall behind. To help pupils catch up in time, the firms behind these tools are offering the resources and curriculum for learning, often free of charge.
According to New York Times education technology reporter Natasha Singer, this approach is not new. It mirrors how the wider technology industry has built its influence inside classrooms over the past 15 years.
How the playbook took shape
In a new book titled Coding Kids, Singer details how technology companies took a central role in promoting computers and coding skills in education. Those firms positioned computer science as an essential discipline, promising that early exposure would prepare students for future employment.
The strategy relied on companies supplying schools with materials, tools and structured lessons, frequently on a pro bono basis. That model allowed the industry to shape what pupils learned and how they engaged with technology from an early age.
AI moves into the classroom
The same template is now being applied to artificial intelligence. Firms developing AI tools are presenting the technology as the next essential skill set, warning that students who do not gain familiarity with it risk being left behind. As before, the companies are offering to provide the educational resources and curriculum required to teach it.
Singer’s account traces this continuity, showing how the messaging around AI in schools echoes the earlier push around coding and computer science. The framing places technology companies at the centre of decisions about what skills pupils should acquire and positions their products as the route to acquiring them.
The book, Coding Kids, examines the long-running relationship between the technology industry and education, documenting how that relationship has developed over a decade and a half and how it now extends to AI.
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