Ben Williamson
University of Edinburgh
https://codeactsineducation.wordpress.com/
3 April 2025
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ben-williamson-7a501b329_openai-and-anthropic-are-fighting-over-college-activity-7313642811457724418-korA

OpenAI and Anthropic are competing for their share of the education market.

They both released "free" AI offerings targeted at students this week, but don't let the "free" bit fool you. The important two sentences in this piece are the last two:

"Both labs releasing education initiatives simultaneously reveals the high value of college students. The race to embed AI tools in academia is a competition to shape how the next generation works with AI — and crucially, to become their default AI tool."

The purpose of education and going to college is not to habituate students to genAI or get them locked in to an AI vendor because students are "valuable" as users and prospective customers.

It's worrying how willingly academia is falling for this brand of corporate "AI literacy" being sold by big tech as "free".

https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/641193/openai-anthropic-education-tool-college