While OpenAI attracts government agencies with $1 licensing deals, Google is shifting its focus to education. The company has introduced a Guided Learning mode for its Gemini model, alongside free access to the AI Pro plan (valued at $250/month) for university students.
Inspired by OpenAI’s Study Mode, Gemini’s tutoring mode avoids giving direct answers. Instead, it acts as an interactive learning partner, guiding students step by step through problem-solving. The goal is to build critical thinking skills, rather than encouraging rote copying of solutions.
Google collaborated with educators and learning experts to ensure the AI helps students understand principles rather than simply memorize results. The new mode also includes tools that incorporate images, videos, and interactive quizzes, allowing learners to immediately test their knowledge while exploring new concepts.
Additionally, the company announced that its AI Pro Plan will be free for students in selected countries, including the U.S., and committed a $1 billion investment over the next three years in AI training programs across American universities.
This move comes amid growing concern that AI could harm learning by providing quick, ready-made answers – a trend confirmed by an MIT study on AI’s impact on students’ cognitive processes. Both Google and OpenAI are now reframing their tools as digital mentors, designed to build skills and logic rather than bypass them.
In Brief: Tech World Highlights
- Vietnam’s VinFast has launched production at its $500 million EV facility in Tamil Nadu, India, marking the first step in a planned $2 billion investment across the country.
- Illinois has passed a law, signed by Governor JB Pritzker, banning AI from acting as an independent therapist and imposing strict rules on its use by mental health professionals.
- Neuralink is beginning clinical trials in the UK with leading hospitals to test its brain implant’s ability to help paralyzed patients control devices with their thoughts.
- Electric air taxi developer Joby Aviation is acquiring the passenger business of Blade Air Mobility for up to $125 million in cash and stock.
- A team led by the University of Basel has recovered traces of the 1918 influenza virus from the preserved lung of a young Swiss man who died during the pandemic’s first wave.
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