Welcome to 2025, the dawn of what may come to be defined as Generation Beta—the cohort poised to succeed Generation Z and Gen Alpha. These “Gen Betans,” as they might eventually be dubbed, will be the first generation to grow up wholly immersed in the reality of artificial intelligence, a force reshaping every facet of human existence.
By the 2030s, barring catastrophic disruptions, today’s newborns are likely to enter classrooms where AI has seamlessly integrated into the educational fabric – not as a novelty but as a normalized, indispensable tool. In this transformative era, the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES), the largest and oldest association of its kind not only in the US but worldwide, has chosen to center its 2025 annual conference on the theme of education in a digital society.
The event, slated for March 22-26 in Chicago, is noteworthy not only for its thematic urgency, but also for its symbolic timing. It coincides with the United States’ recent reentry into UNESCO ordered by the outgoing president Biden – a reconciliation with the UN main cultural body, after the withdrawal adopted jointly with Israel by the first Trump administration in 2019.
This year’s theme, “Envisioning Education in a Digital Society,” seeks to grapple with the seismic shifts driven by innovations like generative AI, the Internet of Things, and next-generation connectivity technologies. These advances, while undeniably transformative, also carry with them profound ethical dilemmas.
Consider, for instance, the phenomenon of hyper-connectivity, with children navigating a labyrinth of digital interactions from an early age. The risks here are manifold: issues of exploitation, dependency, and the erosion of offline social skills. Equally, discussions about the spreading of systemic disinformation and fake news, media literacy, and digital competencies, are essential to ensure that data used to train AI system is fair to everyone and does not misrepresent, discriminate or alienate those already at the margins.
Educators are now tasked not only with teaching students how to use digital tools but also with equipping them to recognize and resist the more insidious elements of the online world, from disinformation to algorithmic bias. The stakes are especially high for marginalized communities, where entrenched inequities could be further compounded by unequal access to AI-driven learning tools.
The pandemic-era disruptions of 2020–2021 underscored these vulnerabilities. As schools shuttered and classrooms migrated online, 1.6 billion learners in over 200 countries faced a jarring preview of what UNESCO termed an “ed-tech tragedy.” A 2023 report from the organization lamented how disparities in connectivity, digital infrastructure, and content exacerbated existing inequalities, offering a cautionary tale about the perils of an unchecked digital transformation.
As the 2025 CIES conference unfolds in Chicago, it will serve as both a forum for optimism and a call to vigilance. How can we harness the potential of AI to enrich education without replicating the injustices of the past? How do we balance innovation with equity, and possibility with responsibility? For Generation Beta, the answers will shape not just the schools of tomorrow but the society they will inherit.
