As AI races into lecture rooms worldwide, Google is discovering that the hardest classes on how the tech can truly scale are rising not from Silicon Valley, however from India’s colleges.
India has turn out to be a proving floor for Google’s schooling AI amid intensifying competitors from rivals, together with OpenAI and Microsoft. With greater than a billion web customers, the nation now accounts for the very best world utilization of Gemini for studying, in accordance with Chris Phillips, Google’s vice chairman and basic supervisor for schooling, inside an schooling system formed by state-level curricula, robust authorities involvement, and uneven entry to units and connectivity.
Phillips was talking on the sidelines of Google’s AI for Studying Discussion board in New Delhi this week, the place he met with business stakeholders, together with Ok-12 college directors and schooling officers, to assemble suggestions on how AI instruments are being utilized in lecture rooms.
The size of India’s schooling system helps clarify why the nation has turn out to be such a consequential testing floor. The nation’s college schooling system serves about 247 million college students throughout almost 1.47 million colleges, per the Indian authorities’s Financial Survey 2025-26, supported by 10.1 million academics. Its increased schooling system is among the many world’s largest as properly, with greater than 43 million college students enrolled in 2021-22 — a 26.5% enhance from 2014-15 — complicating efforts to introduce AI instruments throughout techniques which can be huge, decentralized, and inconsistently resourced.
One of many clearest classes for Google has been that AI in schooling can’t be rolled out as a single, centrally outlined product. In India, the place curriculum selections sit on the state degree and ministries play an lively function, Phillips mentioned Google has needed to design its schooling AI in order that colleges and directors — not the corporate — resolve how and the place it’s used. That marks a shift for Google, which, like most Silicon Valley corporations, has historically constructed merchandise to scale globally slightly than bending to the preferences of particular person establishments.
“We aren’t delivering a one-size-fits-all,” Phillips advised Trendster. “It’s a really numerous atmosphere world wide.”
Past governance, that variety can also be reshaping how Google thinks about AI-driven studying itself. The corporate is seeing quicker adoption of multimodal studying in India, mentioned Phillips, combining video, audio, and pictures alongside textual content — reflecting the necessity to attain college students throughout completely different languages, studying types, and ranges of entry, notably in lecture rooms that aren’t constructed round text-heavy instruction.
Sustaining the teacher-student relationship
A associated shift has been Google’s resolution to design its AI for schooling round academics, slightly than college students, as the first level of management. The corporate has centered on instruments that help educators with planning, evaluation, and classroom administration, Phillips famous, slightly than bypassing them with direct-to-student AI experiences.
“The teacher-student relationship is vital,” he mentioned. “We’re right here to assist that develop and flourish, not exchange it.”
In elements of India, AI in schooling is being launched in lecture rooms which have by no means had one system per scholar or dependable web entry. Google is encountering colleges the place units are shared, connectivity is inconsistent, or studying jumps straight from pen and paper to AI instruments, Phillips mentioned.
“Entry is universally vital, however how and when it occurs may be very completely different,” he added, pointing to environments the place colleges depend on shared or teacher-led units slightly than one-to-one entry.
In the meantime, Google is translating its early learnings from India into deployments, together with AI-powered JEE Major preparation via Gemini, a nationwide instructor coaching program protecting 40,000 Kendriya Vidyalaya educators, and partnerships with authorities establishments on vocational and better schooling, together with India’s first AI-enabled state college.
For Google, India’s expertise is serving as a preview of challenges more likely to floor elsewhere as AI strikes deeper into public schooling techniques. The corporate expects points round management, entry, and localization — now apparent in India — to more and more form how AI in schooling scales globally.
From leisure to studying as the highest AI use case
Google’s push additionally displays a broader shift in how individuals are utilizing GenAI. Leisure had dominated AI use instances final yr, mentioned Phillips, who added that studying has now emerged as one of the vital frequent methods individuals interact with the expertise, notably amongst youthful customers. As college students more and more flip to AI for learning, examination preparation, and skill-building, schooling has turn out to be a extra rapid — and consequential — enviornment for Google.
India’s advanced schooling system can also be drawing rising consideration from Google’s rivals. OpenAI has begun constructing an area management presence centered on schooling, hiring former Coursera APAC managing director Raghav Gupta as its India and APAC schooling head and launching a Studying Accelerator program final yr. Microsoft, in the meantime, has expanded partnerships with Indian establishments, authorities our bodies, and edtech gamers, together with Physics Wallah, to help AI-based studying and instructor coaching, highlighting how schooling is turning into a key battleground as AI corporations search to embed their instruments into public techniques.
On the similar time, India’s newest Financial Survey flags dangers to college students from uncritical AI use, together with over-reliance on automated instruments and potential impacts on studying outcomes. Citing research by MIT and Microsoft, the survey famous that “dependence on AI for inventive work and writing duties is contributing to cognitive atrophy and a deterioration of vital considering capabilities.” This serves as a reminder that the race to enter lecture rooms is unfolding amid rising considerations over how AI shapes studying itself.
Whether or not Google’s India playbook turns into a mannequin for AI in schooling elsewhere stays an open query. Nevertheless, as GenAI strikes deeper into public schooling techniques, the pressures now seen in India are more likely to floor in different nations as properly, making the teachings Google is studying there troublesome for the business to disregard.
