Investigation links student reliance on Google classroom AI to falling scores, still correlational
Google has the deepest AI footprint in schools; investigation and OECD data point to dependence risk — correlation, not proven causation, but worth tracking.
The New York Post relayed a Wall Street Journal investigation on October 1: students are becoming academically and emotionally dependent on Google's classroom AI tools, and students who used AI daily self-reported science scores 20 points lower than those who never used it.
An OECD survey of 760,000 fifteen-year-olds across 91 countries found reading scores at a 25-year low, with the US down 14 points from 2022; the report names AI ubiquity as one factor. Google says its education software reaches more than 170 million students and teachers worldwide, and its internal studies show the tools usefully supplement teachers.
The report also flags OpenAI's ChatGPT, but Google's reach is largest because AI comes preloaded on school Chromebooks. The figures are correlational and self-reported, not proof of causation.