Microsoft to invest over $4 billion in AI education, aiming to train millions across schools and nonprofits

Microsoft has announced that it will invest over $4 billion in cash and technology services to provide AI training for millions of people, as Silicon Valley companies increasingly push to integrate chatbots into educational settings.

The tech giant's initiative comes as artificial intelligence continues to gain prominence in educational environments. Microsoft, the maker of the Copilot chatbot, said the resources would go to schools, community colleges, technical colleges and nonprofits. The company is also starting a new training program, Microsoft Elevate Academy, to "deliver AI education and skilling at scale" and help 20 million people earn certificates in AI. "Microsoft will serve as an advocate to ensure that students in every school across the country have access to AI education," Brad Smith, the president of Microsoft, said in an interview Sunday. Microsoft did not immediately specify how much of the more than $4 billion the company planned to dispense as grants and how much of it would be in the form of Microsoft AI services and cloud computing credits. The announcement comes as tech companies are racing to train millions of teachers and students on their new AI tools.

Even so, researchers say it is too soon to tell whether the classroom chatbots will end up improving educational outcomes or eroding important skills like critical thinking. On Tuesday, the American Federation of Teachers, a union representing 1.8 million members, said it was setting up a national AI training center for educators, with $23 million in funding from Microsoft and two other chatbot makers, OpenAI and Anthropic. Last week, several dozen companies -- including Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and OpenAI -- signed a White House pledge promising to provide schools with funding, technology and training materials for AI education. In 2023, Amazon announced a new company program, "AI Ready," to provide free online Amazon AI skills courses for 2 million people. Before Microsoft's new AI training campaign, the tech giant worked for more than a decade to boost computer science education in schools, including lobbying for new state education laws.

Microsoft also funded nonprofit education groups like Code.org; its "Hour of Code" lessons have been used by tens of millions of schoolchildren around the world. Now that AI tools can generate computer code, tech companies that were once big coding boosters are pivoting to chatbots. As part of Microsoft's announcement Wednesday, the company said it was backing a new Code.org program called "Hour of AI."

"Coding changed the work of software developers, but it didn't change every occupation and profession, or the work of every professional, the way AI probably will," Smith said. "So we need to move faster for AI than we did for computer science."