Anthropic, the mind behind ChatGPT competitor Claude, is joining the industry-wide charge into education, as the tech company announces a new university and classroom partnerships that will put their educational chatbot into the hands of students of all ages.

Announced today, Claude for Education will be entering more classrooms and boosting its peer-reviewed knowledge bank, as it integrates with teaching and learning software Canvas, textbook and courseware company Wiley, and video learning tool Panopto.

“We’re building toward a future where students can reference readings, lecture recordings, visualizations, and textbook content directly within their conversations,” the company explained.

Students and educators can connect Wiley and Panopto materials to Claude’s data base using pre-built MCP servers, says Anthropic, and access Claude directly in the Canvas coursework platform. In summary: students can use Claude like a personal study partner.

And Claude is coming to higher education, too. The University of San Francisco School of Law will become the first fully AI-integrated law school with new Claude AI-enabled learning — as the legal field contentiously addresses the introduction of generative AI. Anthropic is also expanding its student ambassador program and network of Claude Builder Clubs across campuses, launching its first free AI fluency course.

“We’re excited to introduce students to the practical use of LLMs in litigation,” said University of San Francisco Dean Johanna Kalb. “One way we’re doing this is through our Evidence course, where this fall, students will gain direct experience applying LLMs to analyze claims and defenses, map evidence to elements of each cause of action, identify evidentiary gaps to inform discovery, and develop strategies for admission and exclusion of evidence at trial.”

Earlier this week, Anthropic announced it was joining a coalition of AI partners who were forming the new National Academy for AI Instruction, led by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). Anthropic’s $500,000 investment in the project will support a brick-and-mortar facility and later nationwide expansion of a free, educator-focused AI training curriculum.

“The stakes couldn’t be higher: while the opportunity to accelerate educational progress is unprecedented, missteps could deepen existing divides and cause lasting harm,” Anthropic said. “That’s why we’re committed to navigating this transformation responsibly, working hand-in-hand with our partners to build an educational future that truly serves everyone.”

Teachers are pulling up a chair to implement AI in the classroom. 

The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) announced on Tuesday that it will open a training center in New York City devoted to teaching educators how to responsibly use AI systems in their work. 

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Dubbed the National Center for AI Instruction, the training center will open this fall and kick off with a series of workshops on practical uses of AI for K-12 teachers. Representing close to two million members, the AFT is the second-largest teachers’ union in the United States. The effort is being launched in partnership with OpenAI, Microsoft, and Anthropic, who have pledged a cumulative $23 million for the hub. 

“Now is the time to ensure Al empowers educators, students, and schools,” OpenAI wrote in a company blog post published Tuesday, announcing its plan to invest $10 million in the Center over the next five years. “For this to happen, teachers must lead the conversation around how to best harness its potential.”

Backlash and acceptance

The rise of generative AI chatbots like ChatGPT in recent years has sparked widespread concern among educators. These systems can write essays and responses to homework questions in seconds, suddenly making it difficult to determine if assignments have been completed by hand or by machine.

Also: The best free AI courses and certificates in 2025 – and I’ve tried many

At the same time, however, many teachers have actively embraced the technology: a recent Gallup poll found that six-in-ten teachers used AI at work in the most recent school year, helping them save time on tasks like preparing lesson plans and providing feedback on student assignments. To make educators feel more comfortable about using AI, companies including Anthropic and OpenAI have launched education-specific versions of their chatbots: Claude for Education and ChatGPT Edu, respectively. 

Like many other industries that have suddenly had to contend with the ubiquity of powerful AI systems, the US education system has struggled to achieve a healthy balance with the technology. Some school systems, like New York City’s public schools, initially opted to ban its employees and students from using ChatGPT. 

But over time, it’s become clear that AI isn’t going away, and that there is yet to be a long-term benefit in ignoring it. The NYC public school system later changed its no-ChatGPT policy, and some universities, like Duke University and the schools belonging to the California State University system, have begun providing premium ChatGPT services for free to students. Similarly, the Miami-Dade Public School system started deploying Google’s Gemini chatbot to 100,000 of its high school students earlier this year.

Also: Claude might be my new favorite AI tool for Android – here’s why

Like those university initiatives, the new partnership with the AFT will also benefit the AI companies sponsoring the effort, as it will place their technology into the hands of many thousands of new users.

President Trump issued an executive order in April focused on equipping students and teachers with AI literacy skills, signaling efforts like this one with AFT are in line with the administration’s forthcoming AI Action Plan, set to be released later this month. 

Impact on critical thinking

Apologists for AI in the classroom will sometimes compare it to previous technologies, such as digital calculators or the internet, which felt disruptive at the time of their debut but have since become foundational to modern education.

Also: Heavy AI use at work has a surprising relationship to burnout, new study finds

A new body of research, however, is starting to show that using AI tools can inhibit critical thinking skills in human users. The technology’s long-term impacts on human cognition and education, therefore, could be far more pronounced than we can know today.

A recent study conducted by researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and Microsoft, for example, found that “while GenAI can improve worker efficiency, it can inhibit critical engagement with work and can potentially lead to long-term overreliance on the tool and diminished skill for independent problem-solving. Higher confidence in GenAI’s ability to perform a task is related to less critical thinking effort.”

An MIT Media Lab study yielded similar findings: that using AI “undeniably reduced the friction involved in answering participants’ questions,” but that “this convenience came at a cognitive cost, diminishing users’ inclination to critically evaluate the LLM’s output or ‘opinions’ (probabilistic answers based on the training datasets).”

Finding benefits while avoiding risks

The National Academy for AI Instruction aims to chart a path forward for educators in the age of AI, one that embraces the technology’s benefits while steering clear of the potential risks that are very much still coming into focus. 

Also: Samsung just answered everyone’s biggest question about its AI strategy

“The direct connection between a teacher and their kids can never be replaced by new technologies,” Randi Weingarten, president of the AFT, said in a statement included in OpenAI’s blog post, “but if we learn how to harness it, set commonsense guardrails and put teachers in the driver’s seat, teaching and learning can be enhanced.” 

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