A new book by New York Times reporter Natasha Singer, titled Coding Kids, argues that the tech industry has spent the past 15 years embedding itself in schools by promoting computer science education, and is now using the same playbook to push AI into classrooms. Singer contends that earlier promises linking coding skills to secure, well-paid jobs proved shaky by the time students entered the workforce, even as the companies involved gained a captive audience of future employees and customers. She warns that without learning from this history, schools risk repeating the pattern with generative AI, adopting industry-shaped curricula without adequate safeguards.

The book traces how firms such as Apple and Microsoft built their own tools, including Swift and Minecraft, into Advanced Placement Computer Science Principles courses, an arrangement Singer contrasts with the reluctance schools would show towards, say, a pharmaceutical or defence company sponsoring science classes. Google expanded its classroom influence through cheap Chromebooks, whose uptake accelerated during Covid-19 school closures, and its Classroom app, leaving it well placed to promote AI once it emerged. Nonprofits such as Code.org, backed by tech figures including Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, ran high-profile campaigns like "Hour of Code" to popularise programming, though some academics later pursued alternative, more critical curricula, and Singer notes that resistance to the tech industry's role in education eventually grew.