“Corporate Capture:” Big Tech Drives AI Into Education and Workforce Development Before Cost, Risks, Societal Benefits/Harm Are Understood

by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc^®

Do you remember the days when we could purchase a standalone license for computer software? Pay once and done, until someday you might choose to upgrade. In recent years, everything has moved to Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). Now you pay a licensing fee every year (price bound to go up each year). If you do not pay the annual licensing fee, your software is turned off as is access to all of your work in their restrictive file format. Moving your files, or accessing them from a compatible product under a different brand, is difficult even if you can find an alternative still around.

SaaS has become the norm for the display and apps on your car dashboard, apps on your phone, apps on your television…it is a ubiquitous guarantee of annually increasing profits for corporations. As product competition is gobbled up to the delight of shareholders, a loss is felt by comparative shoppers and the consumer who feels like a hostage. This marketing practice started spreading in other forms decades ago, such as providing “free” genetically-modified crop seeds to developing countries knowing in time they will need to buy tractors, fertilizers, other farm implements and, yes, next year’s seeds since the free ones are patented and will only grow for one year. Or giving a user “free play” on gambling applications to get them started, then charging for additional tokens to keep playing once hooked. Or selling computer printers cheaply knowing the expensive ink or toner cartridges (filled sparingly) will need to be replaced over and over again. Even Artificial Intelligence (AI) use is priced in “token usage” billed monthly based on usage, with the same conditions of continued AI usage. These are all a form of something called “corporate capture.”

One vivid example of corporate capture, Microsoft has encountered the growing resistance to its efforts to force consumers to migrate from Windows 10 to 11,  and all the costs associated with needed hardware upgrades and software compatibility issues. The move is financially crippling to small and mid-size business operations worn down by previous pushes. Nearly a billion users, as of December 2025, have resisted, and Microsoft ended up extending their technical support of Windows 10 until October, 2027.

Related to corporate capture is “planned obsolescence,” explained as “the concept of policies planning or designing a product with an artificially limited useful life or a purposely frail design, so that it becomes obsolete after a certain predetermined period of time upon which it decrementally functions or suddenly ceases to function, or might be perceived as unfashionable.^” Everyone has experienced this with electronics, appliances, automobiles and parts, and even clothing with probably no longer a thought. Ten states have enacted “right to repair” laws in response to complaints by a growing amount of aware consumers, burdened by the cost and inconvenience of premature and unnecessary failures of needed and expensive “durable goods.”

When vested interests are allowed to embed advocacy of their products in our educational system, I think most of us would agree that is worrisome at best. When Pharma, a term to describe the pharmaceutical industry and their lobbying wing, mounted a broad effort to rewrite the medical school textbooks, red flags should have gone up. Students were diverted from learning more about holistic and preventative medicine, natural cures and alternatives, and were nudged toward “a pill for every symptom” approach – with all of the known and unknown side-effects and pills to take care of those side-effects. The cost of going to medical school has risen dramatically, but speaking engagements, advocacy of pills and products in journals and commissions for writing prescriptions after graduation offered new ways to pay off student loans. The practice grew to medical device manufacturers and the growth in “specialists,” the exorbitant fees to access the equipment, the fees for referrals and high prices demanded for specialist services.

Providing incentives to education, or lobbied directives, to fully adopt the latest corporate driven, highly financed technology marketing campaign such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) – helping to fuel corporate profits while making it difficult for users to back out or alter course – has been going on for decades and has broader, social, and generational impacts that could be disruptive, even destructive.

In the 1990’s American College Testing tried pushing its “WorkKeys” assessments into every school system as the cure for, what was framed as, an ailing workforce development system. The marketing campaign emphasized “employers just cannot find the skilled workers they need,” even the evidence was to the contrary. To make it look credible, educators in participating states were given the additional task of using ACT’s “job profiling” process to analyze employer’s job classifications for “job-ready” skills. Many of these profiles were rushed and incomplete with a suspect methodology since this was just a sparsely trained “side hustle” for full-time educators. The outcome was a purchased report that, not surprisingly, pointed to WorkKeys assessment tests and products the employer needed to buy from ACT to find the right candidates.

As of 2006, 14 states were participating in the ACT National Career Readiness System and disseminating  ACT WorkKeys throughout their state’s school systems as part of that participation. Although schools received enormous pressure to market ACT’s products from around 1995 to 2006 to local employers, the tepid initial interest by employers has waned. Employers saw little job relevance but did see significant legal liability in using them. In addition to early instances of college administrators accepting bribes to become “WorkKeys charter member states,” the methodology for collecting job data, and that data’s use in selecting assessments, was in many cases suspect. Therefore, validating the job-relevance (i.e content validity for “legal defensibility” for use in employment) of WorkKeys assessments was challenged successfully many times in courts. Educators began to debate the efficacy of testing students for workplace skills that appeared not to be a determinant for employment.  States began quietly unloading their ACT WorkKeys investment. Today, 3 or 4 of the original charter members hold on to some remnants of the ACT WorkKeys system.

For years, Big Tech has showered education with hardware, software, and technical training to secure each advancement into the multi-billion – annually  – education market. Computers originally were going to replace teachers, televised classes (now online) were going to make educational campuses unnecessary, eBooks were going replace paper books and book stores, every student would wear a virtual reality hood, and on and on. Most of these manufactured “trends” materialized at a much lower level than the marketed urgency would have suggested, fading from view or finding a less prolific role.

But the push for AI into the classroom (and every facet of human life) summons the power of the past misfires into a highly financed,  unrelenting, minimally regulated (some say “incentivized by non-action” of regulations and regulators) drive for dominance before anyone knows what hit them. Backed by billionaires who have greased the political system to facilitate the transformation, AI proponents seem to be in a particular hurry to institutionalize AI – playing hardball to defend their investments and social reordering plan. We are hearing all of the old scares, such as “AI will make the U.S. more productive and competitive,” not clarifying how that helps or harms the vast amount of workers. And “we need to beat the Chinese in AI development.” It isn’t ever clear, what that will give the United States and the American people as a result. More unemployment and lower paying jobs? Even the Chinese people would resist that outcome.

Trillions have been invested – including taxpayer’s incentives – into AI, data centers, software assistants, self-performing cars, big rigs, electronics – reminiscent of the “Internet of Things revolution” that quietly receded into practical applications of those innovations that proved themselves worthy of retention. AI is being pushed into every facet of human life at a frightening speed, yet daily we hear reports of the dangers of AI. Before we are even locked in to a single version and application of AI, we are informed not to get too used to it,  a “super artificial intelligence” is just down the road, with “quantum artificial intelligence” right behind that.

In a program by PBS News Horizons entitled” Technology is Reshaping Education. But is it Helping Students Learn,” show host William Brangham interviewed Natasha Singer, a New York Times reporter and author of “Coding Kids: Big Tech’s Battle to Remake Public Schools.”  The show’s premise begins with “Putting technology into schools was sold as a revolution that would help kids learn. But as tech companies exert greater influence, many are now wondering if screen time is doing more harm than good. Technology is reshaping education. But is it helping students learn?”

In one of the author’s examples of corporate capture is Google’s “philanthropic” efforts to place their Chrome Books in every student’s hands, with Google subsidizing most or all of it. Initially this was seen by many as a boost in educating students. Some principals, digging deeper, discovered classes were scheduled with Google Classroom, students prepared assignments on Google Docs, students and teachers prepared class presentation with Google Slides. Some of those schools tried sending the Chrome Books home with students so they could study anywhere they want, only to find they were used more for personal experiences other than intended. So, principals pulled them back into the classroom and held them in “docking carts” accessible only in the classroom. Justifiably, many principals altered their approach to focus only on “deliberate technology.” Nevertheless, students would move to higher education levels or into the workforce leaning toward Google products since that is what they know.

Natasha Singer, also, noticed in her research, “It started in 2011-2012, Chief Executives of large tech companies such as Google and Microsoft started saying publicly and to governors and the president of the United States, “We are some of the biggest growth engines of the American economy, and we are having difficulty hiring enough talented computer programmers and software engineers, and the problem is public education is not offering enough computer science. To fix this we need every school to teach computer science [citing economic arguments for it and the need for American “competitiveness]”.” Taking what they previously learned on how to generate a large audience through massive media campaigns, tech giants like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg bombarded YouTube, the airwaves and social media to urge kids to learn coding for a wonderful and financially lucrative future. Sounds encouraging.

However, many of the coding courses focused solely on coding, not the understanding of what the coding was for, why it solved a social need, how are these YouTube coding courses steering a child’s development and what are the risks and benefits to society; How are the emails and notices following them by the industry’s tech companies keeping a child narrowly focused and engaged?

Then, in 2023, ChatGPT came along, which can not only write papers, book reports and emails, software engineers are using it to generate code – making the coders job obsolete along with all of the other job classifications predicted to be replaced by artificial intelligence. The tremendous investment in time and resources by education and students, it turns out, was wasted as talented workers, talented potential workers and graduating students are tossed aside, encouraged to prepare for the next “trend” that will come and go. Unfortunately, this time we may have created a number of disgruntled graduates with skills useful in hacking and other nefarious purposes.

Meanwhile, Wharton research identifies “cognitive surrender,” a mode of thinking that emerges when employees rely on AI for decisions. And while the use of AI frees up time, Glean Technologies, Inc. found, workers end up using that extra time to fix its mistakes — or simply ship products they can’t stand behind.  Exhausted workers, many turn to what Glean terms “botshitting”: “shipping AI-generated work that workers haven’t reviewed, don’t fully understand, or couldn’t defend if asked.” Nearly 7 in 10 AI users admitted to this behavior, Glean found, with heavy AI users, Generation Z, men and managers most likely to engage in it.

Parents are rising up against not only the imposition of AI on their children’s education, but to social media, in general, as well. This is a time for thoughtful deliberation of what is right for education and workforce development long-term. The evidence is overwhelming that letting narrow, profit-seeking interests drive policy without weighing the costs and risks to society is harming (rather than helping) students learn and hindering incumbent, future or returning workers development. Education can partner with the private sector, but only when basic, consensus-backed principles are maintained, guardrails and oversight is in place, and that the decision process is open, transparent and free from undue, self-serving influence.

Money for educational programs needs to be from the school district with no strings attached. Politicians and leaders need to pull back from leaning hard on policies that may benefit one or two constituent groups. We need to go back to the days where elected school boards decide sensibly, independently and altruistically on policy and PTAs meet to evaluate and discuss student outcomes toward long-term goals. Broader, purposeful planning will win a race over haphazard, narrowly-focused zig-zagging any day…just ask the tortoise.

Dean Prigelmeier, is founder and President of Proactive Technologies, Inc^®.- a company with over 40 years of expertise and experience is helping employers take their unstructured, informal OJT practices and documents and build it into a structured, documented and revisable system of worker development, The Accelerated Transfer of Expertise System^TM . This approach dramatically shortens the time needed to train each worker to “full job mastery,” closes task mastery gaps incumbent workers may exhibit and provide an infrastructure for deliberate cross-training. Building on a strong generalized skill foundation provided by education, employers have a vested interest in finishing the worker development job to maximize/maintain a worker’s skills and capacity through change. Find out more at Proactive Technologies Inc.’s website.