How Google, Microsoft and OpenAI came to shape what US children learn

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On a humid afternoon in the summer of 2025, Microsoft representatives waited as about 200 teachers filed into a conference hall in downtown Manhattan. The subject was AI chatbots.

The team presented Copilot and had the teachers practise using it to write emails to parents and customise lesson plans. They screened an explainer video from Microsoft’s Minecraft Education division, featuring a cheerful narrator and a cute Minecraft duck.

Natasha Singer was in the room. She published what she found in the New York Times on Sunday.

What the reporting covers

Singer has covered school technology for the paper for more than a decade. The article is an adapted excerpt from her book Coding Kids.

She interviewed more than 100 education and tech industry figures and reviewed hundreds of school, government and corporate documents. A handful of giants have influenced nearly every step of the education supply chain, she concluded.

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