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AI and the Future of Education: Disruptions, Dilemmas and Directions UNESCO Summary This 2025 UNESCO anthology , launched during Digital Learning Week, gathers 21 think pieces on how AI is disrupting education. It highlights both promise and peril: AI can personalize learning and reshape assessment, but risks deepening inequality with one-third of humanity still offline. The book emphasizes keeping teachers central, embedding ethics and human rights in design, and fostering global dialogue to ensure AI serves equity and inclusion. The publication is available through UNESCO’s portal . Quotes “AI is entering education not quietly, but as a disruptive force, stirring hope, unease and tension.” “Access to the most cutting-edge AI models is reserved for those with subscriptions, infrastructure and linguistic advantage.” “Building a new social contract for education … places the transformative agency of human learners and teachers at the centre.”

With outright lies, rhetorical propaganda, the US withdraws from UNESCO, one of humankind’s greatest guardians of heritage and promoters of culture and knowledge. Another dark day. But there will be a dawn, sooner or later.

  UNESCO welcomes the release on bail today of Iranian journalists Niloofar Hamedi and Elaheh Mohammadi, two of the three laureates of the 2023 UNESCO/Guillermo Cano #PressFreedom Prize. May they be able to continue their vital work to inform.

Click here for the article Quick Summary: *In 2022, UNESCO proposed guidelines to regulate digital platforms, but civil society groups are concerned this could enable authoritarian regimes to censor the internet. *The guidelines require platforms to share information with national regulators without procedural safeguards, while enforcement powers lie with the regulator. This risks emboldening authoritarian regimes. *There are growing examples of platforms complying with government takedown notices that infringe on human rights, such as in Vietnam. The UNESCO guidelines could further legitimize this. *The UN is looking to play a larger role in internet governance through initiatives like the Global Digital Compact. But the process so far has lacked diverse input, while details remain unclear. *Rather than centralizing the internet under the UN, the author argues it should recommit to a multi-stakeholder model that ensures inclusion of civil society, technical experts, and the Global M...

Summary: Click here for the full article The United States will rejoin the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in July 2023, after withdrawing in 2017. The move comes after the U.S. Congress passed a bill in December 2022 that authorized financial contributions to UNESCO. Audrey Azoulay, Director General “This is a strong act of confidence, in UNESCO and in multilateralism,” Audrey Azoulay , UNESCO’s director-general, said in a statement after announcing the U.S. decision to a meeting of representatives of the agency’s 193 members at its headquarters in Paris. In 2011, the United States stopped funding UNESCO after it voted to include Palestine as a full member. The move, made because of U.S. legislation mandating a complete cutoff of American financing to any United Nations agency that accepts Palestine as a full member, deprived the agency of nearly a fifth of its budget, forcing it to slash programs . Then, in 2017, the Trump administration ci...