How education leaders can get good answers in the age of AI

As we conduct research into Generative AI here at EAB, we’ve seen significant evidence of its potential operational and instructional power for schools and districts. However, some partners have expressed concern about how the flood of AI-generated content is becoming increasingly harder to distinguish from real, reliable information. This trend is not only impacting students, but also teachers, staff, and community members – and experts believe that this problem is only going to get worse as search engines struggle to filter out AI spam.

This slow but steady deterioration of popular internet platforms, marketplaces, and search engines is a common phenomenon. Typically, online platforms that are initially easy-to-use and valuable to consumers become inundated with ads and other paid content until users grow sick of them and move to new platforms. Known as “enshittification” (yes, that’s the actual term), this phenomenon describes the tidal wave of ads that have taken over many major websites (Facebook and Amazon are two prominent examples). But increasingly, people suspect that Google is already the next victim.

Indeed, finding real, reliable results on Google Search has become gradually more difficult over the past few years. These observations were recently validated in a study on search-engine optimized (SEO) spam in search engines out of Germany. The study looked at over 7,000 product reviews across three different search engines and found that search engines have “significant problems” with too much ad content pushing out real results. The authors also worry that as generative AI content floods the internet, these benign but annoying advertisements will be outcompeted by pure AI spam and misinformation, making Google even more difficult to use.

So, for schools and districts looking for quick answers to pressing questions using reliable, research-backed sources, what options are left?