OpenAI and Anthropic are fighting over college students with free AI

Two leading AI labs, OpenAI and Anthropic, just announced major initiatives in higher education. It’s the constant one-upping we’ve all become familiar with: this week, Anthropic dropped their announcement at 8 AM Wednesday, while OpenAI followed with nearly identical news at 8 AM Thursday.

For Anthropic, this week’s announcement was its first major academic push. It launched Claude for Education, a university-focused version of its chatbot. The company also announced partnerships with Northeastern University...