Microsoft seeding Washington schools with free AI to get kids and teachers hooked
- Reference: 1760461683
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/10/14/microsoft_ai_schools/
- Source link:
Microsoft president Brad Smith [1]announced a new program called Elevate Washington last week that he described as taking advantage of an "opportunity gap" across Washington schools to ensure that every district in the state has equal access to AI tools - Microsoft's AI tools, naturally.
"Analysis of Microsoft data by our AI for Good Lab shows a marked disparity in AI use across the state," Smith noted. Districts in the western part of Washington, where most of the money and economic opportunity is (driven by companies like Microsoft and Amazon), are also where most AI usage happens. In eastern Washington, on the other hand, AI usage is far less prevalent. Microsoft, a company pushing hard for people to adopt AI, naturally wants to change that.
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"As we've learned firsthand from working for a decade on broadband accessibility across the state, this isn't just a technology gap; it's an opportunity gap," Smith said. "In tomorrow's economy, those who understand and use AI will do better than those who don't."
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Bridging that gap through the Elevate Washington program will see Microsoft doling out three years of free Copilot Studio for all of Washington State's school districts and community colleges, plus and $25K in consulting grants for a select few.
High school students across Washington will get three free years of Copilot Chat, Microsoft 365 desktop apps, Teams for Education, and [5]Learning Accelerators (AIs designed to help students study - here's hoping [6]they're accurate ). Community college students are also getting a handout from Redmond in the form of 12 free months of Microsoft 365 personal and its myriad Copilot integrations.
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As for educators themselves, Microsoft said they'd "support AI training programs," but with a focus on "streamlining administrative tasks and enhancing operational efficiencies" - a.k.a., how to use AI in the educational equivalent of the enterprise.
Teachers will also be getting support to help them "explore AI adoption, implementation, and best practices in education," but Microsoft didn't mention any specifics as to what that training will involve.
Get 'em while they're young!
Microsoft's announcement comes the day after the Center for Democracy and Technology published a [8]study that noted just 50 percent of students with access to AI actually used it for school purposes, with many turning to it for companionship, and even romance. Teachers who responded to CDT's study weren't too thrilled with AI's impact on their students either, with 71 percent saying that AI was weakening key academic skills like writing and critical thinking. Most teachers also felt that they weren't getting the necessary training to deal with those negative outcomes, either.
[9]Microsoft pushes $4B at AI education for the masses
[10]GenAI FOMO has spurred businesses to light nearly $40 billion on fire
[11]Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be coders, Jensen Huang warns
[12]AI hype train may jump the tracks over $2T infrastructure bill, warns Bain
CDT isn't the first to point out the less-than-stellar effect AI might be having on academic development. MIT [13]reported over the summer that its research found less brain activity among students who used AI to help them write essays, and their recall of what was written suffered as well.
Like the [14]raft of government discount deals the Trump administration has signed since it became hell bent on adopting AI [15]in the face of FOMO , Microsoft's Washington state AI deal comes with expiration dates, meaning districts, teachers, and students are getting a few years of free AI to decide whether it's worthwhile or not before Microsoft tries to get them to pay.
The whole program is reminiscent of earlier efforts from Microsoft and other tech giants to seed schools with technology, something Google has done to great success in the US, with Chromebooks and Google Apps serving as something of a default in many districts. But those previous products didn't come with a risk of producing [16]hallucinatory slop and [17]impaired reasoning .
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Microsoft didn't respond to questions for this story. ®
Get our [19]Tech Resources
[1] https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2025/10/09/microsoft-elevate-washington/
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aO7H9MSfIPi2ffOCDIUsFgAAAEA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aO7H9MSfIPi2ffOCDIUsFgAAAEA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aO7H9MSfIPi2ffOCDIUsFgAAAEA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/education/learning-tools/learning-accelerators
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/29/ai_agents_fail_a_lot/
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aO7H9MSfIPi2ffOCDIUsFgAAAEA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/09/ai_interactions_us_students/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/09/microsoft_ai_training/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/18/generative_ai_zero_return_95_percent/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/27/jensen_huang_coders/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2025/09/24/bain_ai_costs/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/18/is_ai_changing_our_brains/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2025/09/02/microsoft_rewarded_for_security_failures/
[15] https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/06/ibm_ai_investments/
[16] https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/03/ai_training_requires_more_data/
[17] https://phys.org/news/2025-01-ai-linked-eroding-critical-skills.html
[18] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aO7H9MSfIPi2ffOCDIUsFgAAAEA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[19] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Oh, Washington *state*. For a minute there I assumed from the title that the article was about Washington, the Sussex or (what was) County Durham village. Oh, hello Mr Ferry, I didn't see you there!
Maybe AI could help navigating around Washington?
There must be *something* that can make sense of the mess; once you get off the A19 and have done the Washington Highway, your only hope of sanity returning is when you can spot the Angel of the North peeking over the trees.
Standard Operating Procedure
Redmond has form in invading young minds to get them hooked early.
What matters is that, when they get around to having a paycheck, they pony up the money to keep using their "account".
The Old Dope Peddler?
He gives the kids free samples
because he knows full well
that today's young, innocent faces
will be tomorrow's clientele
[Tom Lehrer]
Re: The Old Dope Peddler?
Yep, just like a good drug dealer, the first one is free.
This is what corporate America has made of the Internet.
Hookers and drugies, is anyone suprise by this, I think NOT!
Not appropriate
First, one must learn how to think and work out problems from first principles.
I use a calculator everyday. But, I first learned arithmetic and then how to set up math problems. The calculator is a tool to speed up doing things I already know how to do. AI can be a tool as well, but it can't think. A human using it also has to be able to spot when it goes wrong. A doctor can use AI to review x-rays, scans and lab reports, but if they don't know how to evaluate what they are being told, it can have serious consequences. It can be fantastic tool that may spot things a doctor may not have considered as well all sometimes get fixated on one solution and fail to recognize evidence to the contrary. A doctor might tell somebody that they just have the flu that's going around to get through a full schedule and not spot that it may be meningitis. An AI assistant may spot the error and a need to probe further.
AI for Good Lab
Just past the Ministry of Truth, turn left at the Ministry of Love (it is on Ballmer Drive)
Bwahaha
Microsoft's "free" AI for schools isn't charity; it's the oldest trick in the business playbook: the first hit is free. Get an entire generation of students and teachers hooked on your proprietary ecosystem, and you've secured customers for life. It's a brilliant market capture strategy disguised as philanthropy.
The price of this "gift"? Our kids become unpaid data-miners, training corporate models with every homework assignment. We're also outsourcing education to tools that have been shown to weaken critical thinking. An AI doesn't mentor curiosity; it optimizes for a standardized output.
So when you see this Trojan horse rolling up to your school district, ask what's really inside. Hint: It’s not a gift, it's a future invoice.
Will it be better than heroin, Brad?
Just asking ...