Google announced Tuesday that early next year it would turn off artificial intelligence tools in its popular software for K-12 students, unless school administrators explicitly choose to make such tools available. Executives at the tech giant said they wanted to be responsive to educators and parents who have asked for more control in how children interact with A.I. But there is a catch: Schools that choose to restrict A.I. entirely will also lose access to Google search.

A.I. features are now a standard part of Google’s commercially available search engine. “Search and A.I. are deeply integrated,” said Chris Phillips, vice president for education at Google. If a school has banned A.I., he added, students “will not have access to search, and they’ll see a message from their school that indicates it’s not available.” Google is by far the dominant technology player in K-12 classrooms. Google’s suite of education apps — including Gmail, Docs and an assignment platform called Classroom — is ubiquitous. Google Chromebooks, low-cost laptops, are the most widely issued student devices in U.S. schools. And Google is synonymous with internet search, a crucial tool for students across the globe.

The company’s new strategy underscores Google’s powerful role in American education. If school leaders want continued student access to search within the company’s ecosystem, they will be forced to embrace Google’s A.I. In recent months, Google has been promoting its Gemini chatbot as a valuable educational tool, saying it can aid teachers in planning lessons and serve as a personalized tutor for students. A new student version of Gemini, Guided Learning, is supposed to make it harder for students to use A.I. to cheat.

“We’re evolving our approach,” said Mr. Phillips. He promised tools that would “support the productive struggle” of learning and tamp down on students turning to A.I. for easy answers. In August, Google turned on A.I. features as the default option inside its Classroom app for K-12 schools that had allowed students separate access to the company’s Gemini chatbot. The move upset some school leaders, who felt schools should be able to decide how and when students used Google’s A.I.

Google’s August change will now be reversed.

A parent movement has been pushing back against the use of A.I. in schools, and against screen time more generally. While A.I. chatbots can be useful tools for research and coding, they can also easily be used to cheat on school assignments and can provide false information. Research shows chatbots can also hinder critical thinking and ensnare adolescents in emotional dependency.

Last week, New York State passed a chatbot safety law that would prohibit companies from providing a variety of A.I. features for minors. And in September, the nation’s two largest school districts, in New York City and Los Angeles — both Google clients — broadly restricted student access to generative artificial intelligence on school devices. Officials in the Los Angeles Unified School District said at the time that they were hoping students would be able to conduct Google searches with A.I. overviews turned off. The overviews are A.I.-generated summaries that appear at the top of searches. They can dissuade students from seeking out multiple sources of information. On Monday, Google executives said that for districts that choose to allow A.I., there will be two options for search inside school-issued accounts, beginning in early 2027. One option will be search with A.I. overviews and A.I. chats turned on, similar to the current consumer experience. The other will be search using Guided Learning, the student version of Google’s Gemini chatbot.

Guided Learning is intended to guide students through a topic step-by-step without providing them with answers that could short-circuit learning. It is supposed to offer an experience modeled on one-to-one tutoring.

The consumer version of Guided Learning is already available within Gemini, and can enable cheating. In a reporter’s test, it produced a detailed essay in response to an Advanced Placement history prompt.

There are greater restrictions in the school version that is currently being piloted, according to Brit Mennuti, product lead for Google Classroom. She said teachers would be able to review students’ chatbot transcripts, among other capabilities.

Opening them feels daunting the minute they come, and the longer I put them off due to that, the more guilt gets added to the mix too, so they just go unadressed.

Has anyone found a strategy that works for this?

After a mind-bending & gut-busting battle in a windmill with evil mini versions of himself, Ash (Bruce Campbell) runs out into the night as another evil version emerges from his own body as a second head.

• Army of Darkness (Evil Dead III) (1993)
• Re-watched in the #SundayFunnies watch party on Mastodon
• On my collection of Action-Comedy-Horror Favourites

As Miguel Parra Hernandez, a Mexican national, was fleeing from U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement on foot last month, he turned into a parking lot. An unmarked government vehicle came screaming into the lot after him and struck him.

When a grand jury in Harris County, Texas, charged the U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officer behind the wheel last week, the indictment pointed to a broader pattern in the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigrants and activists. The charge was assault with a deadly weapon; the weapon was the vehicle.

The Department of Homeland Security, ICE’s parent agency, claimed Parra Hernandez ran in front of the government vehicle; surveillance footage of the incident shows him running away from the car moments before he is hit. (An attorney for the ICE officer accused of assault against Parra Hernandez told The Associated Press his client had not committed any crime.)

In the same month, an unmarked ICE vehicle speeding the wrong way down a one-way street in Long Beach, California, struck a bicycle ridden by Ricardo Gonzalez, whose daughter later said he was a U.S. citizen. An agent immediately drew their gun on Gonzalez, who was later hospitalized for his injuries. The government said the man was not struck, but video released by the New York Times showed the ICE vehicle swerving into the bicycle.

Three days later after the collision in Long Beach, Antonio Moreida stood in the street in Woodland, California, outside Sacramento, documenting an unmarked ICE vehicle when the black Chevy Tahoe accelerated toward him. When the SUV hit him, Moreida told a meeting at Woodland City Hall last week, he was knocked to the ground — and the driver of the Tahoe did not stop to check on him.

The Department of Homeland Security said Moreida jumped onto the hood of the unmarked car, but when video of the incident showed him standing in place, local police and the mayor publicly disputed ICE’s account...

I'm interested in the Steam Machine's potential to be what the Xbox One wanted to be without the bullshit.

There are some Linux apps like Jellyfin (where I watch most stuff by far) but it seems like Waydroid can fill in a lot of the Android gaps that are missing. With a TV like remote.

This would need to have the family approval factor. No hoops to jump through for the wife, just launch apps and watch.

I'm sure there are some tradeoffs specifically in the DRM camp, but the only actual potential DRM app I use is Nebula so that might be fine. I currently watch YouTube via SmartTube to circumvent ads.

Ars there other tradeoffs I'm missing?

Comments

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/77930410

i know the way android stores application config and so on makes it almost imposible to keep a real functioning dotfiles. but what is the closest you can get? is there a way to at least get a declarative list of apps to install or something? maybe some f-droid config at least or something?

“I don’t think they realized how much it was going to affect their voter base,” he said, adding that Washington has “a lot of rural Republican voters.”

Key context, emphasis mine

Speaking as US voters headed to the polls for midterm elections that will decide who controls Congress, Trump did not provide details and it was not immediately clear which funding he meant. He also did not explain how the funding would be stopped at the end of the year, given that the Memorandum of Understanding that provides $3.8 billion in US military aid to Israel each year does not expire until September 2028.

Trump told Fox News' "Fox & Friends" program that Israel no longer needed the funding and that some Democrats and left-wing politicians were using the US financial support to Israel as a talking point ⁠to criticize his fellow Republicans.

"Now, as far as paying Israel, Bibi Netanyahu and I have made a deal that we give Israel $4 billion a year, and we made a deal months ago that we're stopping," Trump said. "We've already agreed that by the end of this year we won't be paying Israel. Now we'll help Israel if they need it," he said.

It was unclear why Trump chose to announce on Tuesday a deal he said he made months ago.

https://www.techtimes.co.uk/apple-facetime-nudity-warning-privacy-1809115

Frankie does not intend to stop sharing intimate moments with her partner. Instead, she said she had asked him to switch off the setting on his phone, following the interruption.