Phillips was speaking on the sidelines of Google\u2019s AI for Learning Forum in New Delhi this week, where he met with industry stakeholders, including K-12 school administrators and education officials, to gather feedback on how AI tools are being used in classrooms.<\/p>\n
The scale of India\u2019s education system helps explain why the country has become such a consequential testing ground. The country\u2019s school education system serves about 247 million students across nearly 1.47 million schools, per the Indian government\u2019s Economic Survey 2025-26<\/a>, supported by 10.1 million teachers. Its higher education system is among the world\u2019s largest as well, with more than 43 million students<\/a> enrolled in 2021-22 \u2014 a 26.5% increase from 2014-15 \u2014 complicating efforts to introduce AI tools across systems that are vast, decentralized, and unevenly resourced.<\/p>\n One of the clearest lessons for Google has been that AI in education cannot be rolled out as a single, centrally defined product. In India, where curriculum decisions sit at the state level and ministries play an active role, Phillips said Google has had to design its education AI so that schools and administrators \u2014 not the company \u2014 decide how and where it is used. That marks a shift for Google, which, like most Silicon Valley firms, has traditionally built products to scale globally rather than bending to the preferences of individual institutions.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are not delivering a one-size-fits-all,\u201d Phillips told TechCrunch. \u201cIt\u2019s a very diverse environment around the world.\u201d<\/p>\n Beyond governance, that diversity is also reshaping how Google thinks about AI-driven learning itself. The company is seeing faster adoption of multimodal learning in India, said Phillips, combining video, audio, and images alongside text \u2014 reflecting the need to reach students across different languages, learning styles, and levels of access, particularly in classrooms that are not built around text-heavy instruction.<\/p>\n Maintaining the teacher-student relationship<\/p>\n A related shift has been Google\u2019s decision to design its AI for education around teachers, rather than students, as the primary point of control. The company has focused on tools that assist educators with planning, assessment, and classroom management, Phillips noted, rather than bypassing them with direct-to-student AI experiences.<\/p>\n \u201cThe teacher-student relationship is critical,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re here to help that grow and flourish, not replace it.\u201d<\/p>\n In parts of India, AI in education is being introduced in classrooms that have never had one device per student or reliable internet access. Google is encountering schools where devices are shared, connectivity is inconsistent, or learning jumps directly from pen and paper to AI tools, Phillips said. <\/p>\n \u201cAccess is universally critical, but how and when it happens is very different,\u201d he added, pointing to environments where schools rely on shared or teacher-led devices rather than one-to-one access.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Google is translating its early learnings from India into deployments, including AI-powered JEE Main preparation<\/a> through Gemini, a nationwide teacher training program covering 40,000 Kendriya Vidyalaya educators, and partnerships with government institutions on vocational and higher education, including India\u2019s first AI-enabled state university.<\/p>\n For Google, India\u2019s experience is serving as a preview of challenges likely to surface elsewhere as AI moves deeper into public education systems. The company expects issues around control, access, and localization \u2014 now obvious in India \u2014 to increasingly shape how AI in education scales globally.<\/p>\n From entertainment to learning as the top AI use case<\/p>\n Google\u2019s push also reflects a broader shift in how people are using GenAI. Entertainment had dominated AI use cases last year, said Phillips, who added that learning has now emerged as one of the most common ways people engage with the technology, particularly among younger users. As students increasingly turn to AI for studying, exam preparation, and skill-building, education has become a more immediate \u2014 and consequential \u2014 arena for Google.<\/p>\n India\u2019s complex education system is also drawing increasing attention from Google\u2019s rivals. OpenAI has begun building a local leadership presence focused on education, hiring former Coursera APAC managing director Raghav Gupta<\/a> as its India and APAC education head and launching a Learning Accelerator program<\/a> last year. Microsoft, meanwhile, has expanded partnerships<\/a> with Indian institutions, government bodies, and edtech players, including Physics Wallah<\/a>, to support AI-based learning and teacher training, highlighting how education is becoming a key battleground as AI companies seek to embed their tools into public systems.<\/p>\n At the same time, India\u2019s latest Economic Survey flags risks to students from uncritical AI use, including over-reliance on automated tools and potential impacts on learning outcomes. Citing studies by MIT and Microsoft, the survey noted that \u201cdependence on AI for creative work and writing tasks is contributing to cognitive atrophy and a deterioration of critical thinking capabilities.\u201d This serves as a reminder that the race to enter classrooms is unfolding amid growing concerns over how AI shapes learning itself.<\/p>\n Whether Google\u2019s India playbook becomes a model for AI in education elsewhere remains an open question. However, as GenAI moves deeper into public education systems, the pressures now visible in India are likely to surface in other countries as well, making the lessons Google is learning there difficult for the industry to ignore.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As AI races into classrooms worldwide, Google is finding that the toughest lessons on how the tech can…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":258012,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[365,363,364,148581,6301,367,10600,111,139,69,145],"class_list":{"0":"post-258011","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-education-ai","12":"tag-gemini","13":"tag-google","14":"tag-google-gemini","15":"tag-new-zealand","16":"tag-newzealand","17":"tag-nz","18":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258011"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258011\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/google-gemini-jee-main.jpg\")
Gemini adds JEE Main preparation for Indian Engineering aspirantsImage Credits:Google<\/p>\n