Take me to Church: Big Tech Advertising their Gift to Education
Civics of Technology Announcements
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Recently, Big Tech companies have been employing an ‘offering’ rhetoric which invokes an interesting narrative. This is especially frequent in marketing to the education sector. The companies refer to their products, which are usually the latest genAI gimmick, as an offering which they present to teachers, educational institutions, or national administrations. In this blog post, I aim to show that this phrasing is more than an odd turn of phrase in current marketing materials and sketch out the image that this religiously marked language conjures up.
Marte Henningsen is a PhD researcher in Philosophy at Maastricht University (NL) focussing on the political economy and narratives surrounding educational technology. Their background is in Computer Science, Cognitive Science, and political activism.
Over time, Big Tech companies have steadily intensified their efforts to capture the education market – and they have, in part, succeeded. Google Classroom had over 150 million users in 2021, OpenAI signed a major deal with the Californian State University system giving over half a million educators and students access to ChatGPT and the US-based teacher union AFT recently announced a partnership with Microsoft, OpenAI, and Anthropic to provide free AI trainings to their 1.8 million members. These developments stand at the current height of long histories of technology introduction to education (see e.g. Watters (2021)). The technology that has entered the education sector in the last few decades, is mostly developed, marketed, and owned by the private sector. The current hype around genAI has further given rise to industry chatbots such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT Edu, Microsoft’s Copilot, and Google’s LearnLM which are all marketed to be specially geared towards education.
Through these technologies and their marketing, Silicon Valley is talking up an education revolution but often they do not explicitly engage with educational philosophies or research. However, their marketing materials (such as websites, promotional videos, and blog posts) and especially the chosen language allows us to recognize their implicit vision of education, the supposed roles of teachers, students, technology, and developing companies. In this blog post, I take a closer look at a specific word, which I have noticed here and there in promotional materials across Big Tech companies: namely “offering”. I will also take a closer look at the background of the chosen language as well as the invoked imagery.
Lately, Big Tech has labelled their latest genAI tool marketed towards the education sector as an offering – used as a noun. For example, OpenAI writes of “an affordable offering for universities” in the context of introducing ChatGPT Edu. In the beginning of 2025, Microsoft announced their Copilot Chat for education customers and called it their “best-in-class offering”. Two days after Duolingo released their new ‘AI-first’ strategy, they announced that they added nearly 150 new courses to their “current offering”. And Meta referred to their “Meta for Education Offering” in several blog posts in 2024 and 2025, including here not just genAI technologies but also the company's virtual reality (VR) devices.
While the use of this word is not omnipresent in Big Tech’s marketing to the education sector, its distinct religious connotation makes it an interesting case worth taking a closer look at. According to the Oxford dictionary of English etymology, the historical meaning of offer (and thus offering) is “present as an act of worship”. The Latin root word offero was and is used in Ecclesiastical Latin to mean “to offer to God” and “consecrate”. While offering is also used in non-religious use cases such as the stock launch of a company being called an initial public offering (IPO), it still carries strong religious connotations and evokes religious imagery. These connections pertain to the Big Tech marketing excerpts above. In this blog post, I aim to give some wider context to this religiously marked language, highlighting the entanglement of religious symbolisms and technology marketing to show that offering is not just an odd turn of phrase or quirk of language. In the end of the blog post, I sketch the narratives that can be invoked through the use of this language.
Mentions of religion are never far away in the discourses surrounding AI, especially in contemporary debates about Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) or the singularity. The technology itself is often compared to something akin to a god. Sam Altman for example referenced to GPT-5 as a “magic intelligence in the sky” and AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton also spoke of AI as “godlike”. Painting the technology in this light is then closely connected to eschatological discourses in which AI is feared to bring about the end of the world or at least the end of humanity. These narratives of AI ending (or - on rarer occasions – saving) the world are connected in several works with the broader worldviews of Silicon Valley figures and their strive for power and control (see e.g. Becker (2025) or Gebru & Torres (2024)).
But not only is the technology itself likened to a religious image, the technological development can also become caught up in practices and languages with distinct religious marking. In her recent book ‘Empire of AI’, journalist Karen Hao describes her insights on the culture at OpenAI (Hao, 2025). In an interview, Hao highlights that through the book she wanted to convey the nearly religious belief system she found at the company, especially surrounding the goal of building AGI. Building an ‘aligned’ AGI – so a strong AI which behaves compatible with human values and goals – was the original mission of OpenAI. In reference to the employees at OpenAI, Hao said that “the amount of power to influence the world is so profound that I think they start to need religion; some kind of belief system or value system to hold on to.” She further details how OpenAI co-founder and former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever led employees in chants of “Feel the AGI, feel the AGI” and burned an effigy which was supposed to represent an ‘unaligned’ AGI. These examples show a deeper entanglement of religion with technology development than the equating of (future) AI with something godlike.
The occurrence of religious-like practices are not always contained only to the inside of technology companies. They can also spread beyond as for example through brand evangelism. Like Christian evangelists aiming to spread their beliefs in Jesus Christ, brand evangelists spread their convictions of certain products and companies. They differ from traditional or influencer marketing as they are not financially compensated for their efforts and are instead voluntary advocates – essentially performing free labour. Guy Kawasaki, chief evangelist at Apple, is often credited as the father of evangelism marketing. Together with colleague Mike Boich, they were responsible for advertising the Macintosh computer in the early 1980s. The goal was to create an almost cult-like following to the company and its products. While the role of brand evangelist also spread to other companies (e.g. Steve Ballmer at Microsoft), Apple can be said to have accomplished it most effectively as the company and its customers/fans/followers have oftentimes been described as cult-like. Apple has repeatedly rallied masses of people in tents in front of Apple Stores whenever a new iPhone has been released – often days in advance. This shows how religious-like practices and language can also be found beyond the boundaries of tech companies.
The religious elements in the cultural background of today’s technology companies – namely the US counterculture of the 60’s - have also been established. Historian Fred Turner has outlined the historical developments from the hippiesque, esoteric, commune movement to the later cyberculture (Turner, 2006). He traces this history mainly by following Stewart Brand and the Whole Earth Catalogue network, which includes the futurist Buckminster Fuller as well as Apple co-founders Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs. Turner maintains that many figures from this group played an important part in reframing computers from controlling machines to tools for personal liberation. The legacy of the counterculture on the west coast of the United States was described as ‘The Californian Ideology’ in 1995 by media theorists Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron (Barbrook & Cameron, 1995). The authors also highlight the religious connotations in this ideology, calling it a “heterogeneous orthodoxy for the coming information age” and describing it as a “profound faith in the emancipatory potential of the new information technologies”. This shows the deep entanglement not just of single companies or marketing strategies with religious motivations, language, and practice, but of Silicon Valley culture as a whole.
However, we can go even further, turning here to Critical Theory and its analysis of the connections between religion and capitalism. Max Weber’s „The Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism“ (Weber, 1905) examines the Puritan ideas and especially its work ethic that enabled the rise of modern capitalism, such as high devotion to activity as well as frugality. Intended as an answer to this text, Walter Banjamin’s brief fragment titled “Capitalism as Religion” (Benjamin, 1985 (1921)) was posthumously published in 1985. According to philosopher Michael Löwy, Benjamin transforms Weber’s descriptive analysis into a “passionate anticapitalist attack” (Löwy, 2009). Benjamin starts the fragment with the following sentence “One can behold in capitalism a religion, that is to say, capitalism essentially serves to satisfy the same worries, anguish, and disquiet formerly answered by so-called religion.” Benjamin develops an analysis of religion which goes beyond those rites which are explicitly named religious and searches for those practices which are similar in effect, finding them in modern capitalist societies.
We can see now that the connections of religiously marked language and practices with modern AI companies are very far reaching and I can hardly include it all in this text. But I hope to have provided you with an idea of the rich background to Big Tech companies presenting their offerings on the EdTech market. We have zoomed out here more and more: starting from AI being compared to God, moving to religious practices within tech companies and beyond, and finally ending with the deep religious influences on the culture surrounding tech companies. This complex of ideas, practices, and historic developments showcases the entanglement of religiously marked language within modern marketing narratives and makes clear that Big Tech referring to their products as offerings is not just a quirk of language, but deserves a closer look and is perhaps indicative of something larger.
In this last part, I now want to turn to the image and narrative which are evoked for example by OpenAI presenting “an affordable offering for universities” or the “Meta for Education Offering”. The use of this word frames Big Tech’s marketing of genAI products to the education sector as an act of presenting a gift to a deity. This casts the companies, the technology, and the education sector into very specific roles, which I am very briefly outlining here.
By presenting their offering, the Big Tech companies are positioning themselves as some courteous characters with an oblation to the education gods. The same companies which have never once made headlines for being humble are now bringing forth a kind offer out of devotion and respect to the receiver. They thus seem to have no interest in the offering other than pleasing and worshiping a deity. Translated to the present example, this would mean that Big Tech has no further interest in bringing their latest technologies into the education sector other than helping all those involved there: teachers, students, educational institutions. This is a great tale; one I would certainly like to believe, especially given the omnipresence Big Tech already has in many schooling systems.
However, when taking a look at the political economy of Silicon Valley’s advance into the education sector, a very different picture forms. Big Tech companies have huge interests in pressing their technology into the hands of learners and teachers. They are seeking to establish market shares not just within the current EdTech market but also with future users. Pupils and students using institutionally issued chatbot-accounts, are more likely to become paying subscribers when they leave their school and university – or so goes the hope which accompanies Big Tech’s capture of the EdTech market. Obfuscating the financial and power interests that guides Silicon Valley in their education endeavour therefore also seeks to preserve their possibility on future income streams
The educational sector, to which this offering is seemingly presented, is additionally cast as having power over these Big Tech companies. The docile presenter of the technology is appeasing this higher power of the education sector. This implies a significant power imbalance between the private corporations of Silicon Valley and the still largely public education sector. However, this suggested hierarchical picture of government institutions over the tech companies is quickly crumbling when compared to the reality in which Big Tech executives sit in the White House chumming up with the president who has gutted the US Education Department.
The way in which educational institutions and national administrations do have power over Big Tech corporations is their ability to regulate the tech sector as well as their access to the education market. When these regulations take effect, they could then actually limit the power and revenue stream of Big Tech. In this context, one can then read the offering framing as appeasing and disarming this very concrete possibility of power over Big Tech. This aligns with the reality of technology companies’ extensive lobbying activities against possible regulations.
In this image, which the usage of offering opens up, the technology is this offering itself: somehow the centre of the activity and simultaneously just the object of something that goes far beyond it. A religious offering is not about the material transaction itself, but rather deeply symbolic. However, in the context of Big Tech’s advance into the education sector, we are required to take a very close look at what is offered to us and the materialities of this transaction. Our gift brings with it several consequences which are not visible at a cursory glance: environmental risks, unwanted dependencies, and the modification of our understanding and realisation of education are creeping up on us; out of their kind gift like Greek soldiers out of a wooden horse in Troy.
References
Barbrook, R., & Cameron, A. (1995). The Californian Ideology. Mute, 1(3).
Becker, A. (2025). More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley's Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity. Basic Books.
Benjamin, W. (1985 (1921)). Capitalism as Religion. Suhrkamp.
Gebru, T., & Torres, É. P. (2024). The TESCREAL bundle: Eugenics and the promise of utopia through artificial general intelligence. First Monday, 29(4).
Hao, K. (2025). Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI. Penguin Press.
Löwy, M. (2009). Capitalism as Religion: Walter Benjamin and Max Weber. Historical Materialism, 17(1), 60-73.
Turner, F. (2006). From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, teh Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism. University of Chicago Press.
Watters, A. (2021). Teaching Machines: The History of Personalized Learning. MIT Press.
Weber, M. (1905). The Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism.