UN global dialogue for AI in schools

The UN General Assembly's Global Dialogue on AI Governance offers a blueprint for how schools can approach AI policy and AI governance education.

In this episode:

• The UN General Assembly's Global Dialogue on AI Governance demonstrates a global effort to define AI ethics for educators and policymakers, gathering 1,500+ submissions.
• A key divergence in the UN AI recommendations shows governments prioritizing 'capacity-building' while other stakeholders prioritize 'safety,' highlighting critical considerations for AI safety in schools.
• Effective AI governance education involves mirroring the UN's stakeholder-inclusive approach by inviting students, parents, and teachers to shape AI in education policy within their own school communities.
• To bridge the AI divide, schools must implement AI thoughtfully to enhance equity and provide personalized support, ensuring accessibility is foundational, not an afterthought.
• Meaningful human oversight is central to AI literacy, requiring students to develop critical thinking skills to evaluate AI, understand its limitations, and exercise judgment.

Chapters:

• 00:00 — Cold open & welcome
• 00:25 — UN Global Dialogue on AI Governance: Scope and Ambition
• 00:55 — AI Governance Education: A Blueprint for School AI Policy
• 01:40 — Diverging Priorities: Capacity vs. AI Safety in Schools
• 02:25 — Bridging the AI Divide: Equity and AI Accessibility
• 02:50 — Practicalities for Schools: Meaningful Human Oversight and AI Literacy
• 03:30 — UNESCO's Call: Protecting Cultural and Linguistic Heritage with AI
• 03:50 — Co-Creating the Future: The UN AI Recommendations for Educators

How can schools develop an AI in education policy effectively?
Schools can mirror the UN's Global Dialogue on AI Governance by establishing their own school-level 'AI Dialogues' with students, parents, teachers, and leaders to collectively shape policy, rather than just adopting new tools.

What are the main priorities for AI ethics for educators and AI safety in schools?
Global consultations for the UN's dialogue highlighted that while governments prioritize 'capacity-building,' other stakeholders prioritize 'safety,' transparency, accountability, and human oversight, all crucial for AI ethics for educators.

How can AI governance education help bridge the digital divide in schools?
AI governance education must focus on using AI to bridge equity gaps by providing personalized support and differentiation for all students, ensuring accessibility is a foundational principle rather than an afterthought, as highlighted by the International Telecommunication Union.

Featuring: Dan Fitzpatrick, UN General Assembly, António Guterres, Global Dialogue on AI Governance, Independent International Scientific Panel on Artificial Intelligence, Yoshua Bengio, Maria Ressa, International Telecommunication Union (ITU), UNESCO.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

If this episode makes you think, please let us know in the comments and support us by subscribing and leaving a review. Thank you. Today we are exploring the critical steps the global community is taking to shape the future of artificial intelligence, specifically looking at a recent press release from the United Nations about their inaugural global dialogue on AI governance. This groundbreaking initiative, which kicked off on July 6, 2026, brought together governments, tech companies, academia, and civil society to tackle the immense challenge of AI safety, accountability, and human oversight. More than 1,500 written submissions from organizations and individuals across all regional groups contributed to shaping this crucial global conversation. Now the first thing that really strikes me about this dialogue and something educators should pay close attention to is its sheer scale and the ambition behind it. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres put it plainly, asking if we will govern AI together or let it govern us. The UN General Assembly mandated this global dialogue on AI governance to ensure that the priorities of all nations, not just the most technologically advanced, are heard. Think about that for a moment. This isn't just a technical discussion, it's a massive collaborative exercise in collective reasoning and shared vision building, aiming to define a path where technology advances hand in hand with human dignity, equity, and sustainable development. It's a powerful example of starting with why, not how when it comes to technology. They're asking what kind of future we want to build with AI, rather than just how to implement the latest AI tool. This is fundamentally about AI governance education, not just at a global level, but right down to our schools. For a school leader, this could be a blueprint for how you approach AI policy. You wouldn't just bring in a new tool and tell everyone to use it, would you? The UN started with six months of global consultations, drawing in a huge range of stakeholders. That's a perfect parallel to the audit and activate phases in my seven lessons for AI adoption framework. You need to evaluate tools through hands-on pilots, not just marketing claims, and you need to empower teachers as change agents. Imagine setting up a school level AI dialogue with students, parents, teachers, and leaders to shape your own AI and education policy. What would that look like in your primary school or in your secondary department planning for the next academic year? It's about building a shared evidence base, much like the independent international scientific panel on artificial intelligence, co-chaired by Joshua Bengio and Maria Ressa that did for the UN dialogue. The second big takeaway for us as educators is about those diverging priorities that emerged from the consultations. What the researchers found was fascinating. Governments as a stakeholder group placed capacity building first, essentially training people and building infrastructure. But most other groups, including civil society and the private sector, ranked safety as their top concern. Other high priorities included transparency, accountability, and human oversight. This tension isn't unique to global AI governance, it's playing out in schools everywhere. School leaders, often looking at the bigger picture, might instinctively focus on professional development and getting teachers comfortable with new tools, that capacity building piece. But teachers, students and parents are often asking, is this AI safe? How do we ensure fairness? Who is accountable if something goes wrong? This highlights the importance of open dialogue, of truly listening to all voices and building a policy that addresses both the how do we use it and how do we use it responsibly questions. We need to be proactive about AI safety in schools, not reactive. And this leads us to the third crucial point for schools, the emphasis on bridging the AI divide and ensuring robust human oversight. Doreen Bogden Martin, Secretary General of the International Telecommunication Union, highlighted the need to focus on the 2.2 billion people who have yet to join the digital world. But we have similar divides within our own educational communities. AI, if not implemented thoughtfully, can easily widen existing equity gaps. Think about the middle 80% of students in your classroom. We often focus resources on the top achievers or those needing significant intervention. But AI has the potential to be a powerful equalizer for that often invisible majority, offering personalized support, differentiation and enrichment that just isn't possible with human educators alone. This aligns perfectly with the idea that AI should be about enhancement, not replacement. And that accessibility is not an afterthought but a foundation. We must use AI to bridge gaps, not create new ones. If these conversations are sparking new ideas for you, remember to hit that follow or subscribe button wherever you're listening. We've got so much more to explore together on AI and education, and your support keeps these episodes coming. So what does all this mean for the practicalities of AI governance in your school? The UN dialogue is advocating for meaningful human oversight. For us this means teaching students not just how to use AI tools, but how to think with them. It's about cultivating AI literacy, understanding AI's limitations, its failure modes, and managing conversations with precision. This is about critical thinking, not just technical skill. When a year eight geography student uses an AI to help research a project on climate change, the real value isn't in what the machine produces but in how the student responds, evaluates, questions, and synthesizes that information with their own judgment and care. That's human in the loop thinking and action. And let's not forget UNESCO Director General Carla Dellin's powerful point about protecting our rich and diverse cultural and linguistic heritage. AI should strengthen, not erode this diversity. This is a huge opportunity for our curriculum. How can we use AI to create more culturally responsive materials, support multilingual learners, or help students explore their own heritage in new ways? Imagine a history department using AI to help students translate ancient texts or reconstruct lost languages, giving them access to voices and perspectives that were previously inaccessible. This moves beyond generic AI is changing everything statements and into concrete imaginative applications. The UN AI recommendations are a call for us all to think bigger. Ultimately, the UN's global dialogue on AI governance, which involved key entities like the International Telecommunication Union and the Office for Digital and Emerging Technologies, is a reminder that we are all co-creators of this AI-powered future. For educators, this isn't just about understanding technology. It's about understanding how to build a collaborative, ethical, and equitable future within our own school communities. It's about empowering everyone to have a voice, to ask hard questions, and to ensure that AI truly serves our deepest educational purposes. Because ultimately, the goal of AI governance education isn't to control technology, but to cultivate wisdom, foster equity, and protect the human spirit in a rapidly evolving world. That's all for today. Thanks for listening.