UNESCO’s 2025 report, AI and Education: Protecting the Rights of Learners, is a stark reminder that education is first and foremost a human right and that the way we integrate artificial intelligence into classrooms will determine whether that right is strengthened or eroded.
Adaptive systems, chatbots, and automated grading tools promise personalization and efficiency are already use in classrooms. As UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay notes, “AI offers major opportunities for education, provided that its deployment in schools is guided by clear ethical principles.” But the report makes clear that without safeguards, these same tools could deepen inequality, compromise privacy, and weaken the human and social dimensions of learning.
Nearly one-third of the world’s population (2.6 billion people) still lacks internet access. Girls, rural learners, individuals with disabilities, and marginalized groups remain on the wrong side of the digital divide. Without deliberate action, UNESCO warns, we risk moving from a digital divide to an AI divide.
One of the report’s most striking sections examines how AI tools may affect cognitive development. Researchers are beginning to track “AI-chatbot-induced cognitive atrophy”. Which is described as the tendency for overreliance on large language models to reduce memory retention, motivation, and critical thinking. As the report notes, this is in tandem with a recent MIT study showed that students relying heavily on AI produced more uniform, less memorable work and reported feeling less ownership of their ideas.
In short: when learners outsource too much thinking to machines, they risk losing some of the very skills education is meant to build.
Yet this is not a call to abandon AI. When used responsibly, these systems can support personalization, help teachers save time (now we may need to understand what they are doing with that time), and expand access to resources.
The challenge is in ensuring AI complements, not replaces, human learning.
The report highlights that digital learning is not just a technical matter but an issue of individual rights. Among the concerns:
- Only 20% of EdTech products reviewed in a global study met basic privacy standards.
- Nearly half of teachers worldwide report they are excluded from technology decisions that reshape their classrooms.
- English dominates more than half of online content, leaving thousands of languages underrepresented and risking cultural homogenization.
- With private companies playing an outsized role in digital education, profit motives often collide with the public good.
Collectively these highlights point to the need for stronger governance, clear accountability, and frameworks that protect learners before exploitation becomes normalized.
UNESCO states in the report that “…to ensure that digitalization enhances rather than undermines the right to education, States must integrate human rights protections into digital education environments by acting across each dimension of the 5C framework (which UNESCO republished in 2024).
As suggested the UNESCO’s 5C framework might be leveraged to help create the governance needed to support innovation while protecting the rights of learners (and I would say educators and families as well).
- Coordination and Leadership. Described as strong, inclusive governance led by ministries of education.
- Content and Solutions. Defined as high-quality, accessible, curriculum-aligned materials available in diverse languages.
- Capacity and Culture. Including investments in teacher training and digital citizenship, not just devices.
- Connectivity and Infrastructure. Providing essential reliable, affordable, and meaningful access to technology.
- Cost and Sustainability. Described as long-term planning and funding that prevent dependence on short-term fixes or corporate charity.
The report closes with a call for education systems (including policy makers and leaders) to be proactive in providing safeguards for privacy, protections for teachers’ professional autonomy, and guarantees of cultural and linguistic diversity within their commitments to AI adoption.
For those of us working at the intersection of education and technology, UNESCO’s call to action is important. Education must remain a human right, not a commercial opportunity.
The choices governments, schools, and AI and EdTech companies make in the coming years will shape whether AI expands access to meaningful learning or creates new forms of exclusion.
Jody is a thought leader in education and a champion for women in leadership and designing learning spaces and practices that are inclusive for all. You can follow her work at jodybritten.com. You can subscribe to Jody’s newsletter to get weekly updates delivered right to your in-box at https://jodybritten.medium.com/subscribe.
