Google Temporarily Pauses AI-Powered 'Homework Helper' Button in Chrome Over Cheating Concerns

An anonymous reader shared this article from the Washington Post:

A student taking an online quiz sees a button appear in their Chrome browser: 'homework help.' Soon, Google's artificial intelligence has read the question on-screen and suggests 'choice B' as the answer. The temptation to cheat was suddenly just two clicks away Sept. 2, when Google quietly added a 'homework help' button to Chrome, the world's most popular web browser. The button has been appearing automatically on the kinds of course websites used by the majority of American college students and many high-schoolers, too. Pressing it launches Google Lens, a service that reads what's on the page and can provide an 'AI Overview' answer to questions — including during tests.

Educators I've spoken with are alarmed. Schools including Emory University, the University of Alabama, the University of California at Los Angeles and the University of California at Berkeley have alerted faculty how the button appears in the URL box of course sites and their limited ability to control it.

Chrome's cheating tool exemplifies Big Tech's continuing gold rush approach to AI: launch first, consider consequences later and let society clean up the mess. 'Google is undermining academic integrity by shoving AI in students' faces during exams,' says Ian Linkletter, a librarian at the British Columbia Institute of Technology who first flagged the issue to me. 'Google is trying to make instructors give up on regulating AI in their classroom, and it might work. Google Chrome has the market share to change student behavior, and it appears this is the goal.'
Several days after I contacted Google about the issue, the company told me it had temporarily paused the homework help button — but also didn't commit to keeping it off. 'Students have told us they value tools that help them learn and understand things visually, so we're running tests offering an easier way to access Lens while browsing,' Google spokesman Craig Ewer said in a statement.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.