In April of 2025, President Donald Trump issued an executive order that aims at ensuring America’s youth are provided with “opportunities to cultivate the skills and understanding necessary to use and create the next generation of AI technology.” This order came just after China mandated AI education for all primary and secondary students across the country, starting this fall.

Without a doubt, AI’s potential has drawn attention from educators, policymakers and entrepreneurs alike. And as Waqas Suhail — cofounder and CEO of DaMeta1, who has worked closely with public and private institutions deploying intelligent learning systems — put it, “we’re entering a phase where AI in education is less about novelty but more about infrastructure and becoming part of the system itself — quietly, quickly and unevenly.”

While ethical questions about how these tools are being used continue to be asked and bubbles of hype are already bursting, the major trends suggest that this technology is disrupting things dramatically, even in education.

From Hype To Reality

Suhail believes that the most meaningful AI applications in education don’t just automate but adapt. And that’s why he argues that the true promise of AI in the global education sector is not in replacing teachers, but in augmenting their time and insight.

One example is DaMeta1’s Ilmversity platform, a tool that builds virtual classrooms where AI tutors personalize lessons and provide teachers with real-time insights. Backed by accelerator programs at Microsoft and AWS, it’s part of a broader wave of platforms pushing adaptive learning into the mainstream. Although the metaverse may have faded from headlines, AI-powered personalization — one of its more practical ideas — is still gaining traction in education.

Other tools are also pushing AI-powered learning into classrooms — from Khan Academy’s Khanmigo, which offers Socratic-style tutoring, to Google’s LearnLM, a model trained specifically for educational dialogue. Together, these platforms are testing what personalized, AI-native education could look like.

“The best AI tools free teachers from administrative overload and give them space to do what no system can — build trust, motivate and respond to nuance,” Suhail told me. “The future isn’t AI versus teachers; it’s AI with teachers.”

That vision is beginning to take hold. Paul Tudor Jones told Bloomberg’s Open Interest that AI-powered virtual tutors could “dramatically improve learning outcomes for low-income students, reducing educational inequality.” In the U.K., Jill Duffy of Cambridge University Press & Assessment warned in a letter published in Financial Times that AI should “enhance, not replace, human involvement in teaching,” adding that “instead of questioning whether students have used AI, we should ask how.”

Data also supports them. One study by Common Sense Media found that 70% of U.S. teens now use genAI tools for schoolwork. The World Economic Forum, meanwhile, projects that AI will eliminate nine million jobs by 2026, but also create eleven million. According to Suhail, that’s not just a labor shift. “It’s a literacy gap in motion.”

That gap is not limited to the U.S. In the UAE, for example, public-private initiatives are underway to bring AI curriculum into public high schools by 2026, according to recent government announcements. South Korea also plans to phase in AI-powered digital textbooks for school children as young as 8, with full integration across multiple subjects by 2028.

The Race To Get It Right

Around the world, educational leaders are scrambling to keep pace. UNESCO’s Education 2030 agenda urges schools to prioritize AI tools that are inclusive, equitable and human-centered. The OECD and European Commission have also introduced AILit, a framework that “outlines the essential knowledge, skills and attitudes young people need to understand and interact with AI systems in a confident and critical manner.”

But implementation hasn’t been at the same pace. Some schools have banned AI outright, while others deploy it without clear guidelines or training. Suhail, however, sees the inconsistency as both a risk and sign of progress. “Every education system is at a different starting point. What matters now is whether we can build capacity, not just technology,” he noted. “You can’t solve an institutional problem with a software patch.”

That warning resonates with education leaders who caution against tech overreach. “Too much tech risks sidelining teachers, who should instead focus on nurturing learning and curiosity,” Duffy said.

Still, the global race is underway — not just to adopt AI, but to do so responsibly. From how teachers are trained to how students are evaluated, countries are rethinking what learning should look like in an AI-native world.

What Comes After

The challenge now isn’t just about who has access to AI, but also about how it’s taught and who gets left behind if systems fail to adapt. Suhail believes that we have a rare window right now to shape how AI is used in education. That means investing not just in platforms but in people, policies and purpose.

AI literacy mandates across the world and the rise of AI-first learning tools undoubtedly mark a structural shift in global education, where learning is entering an AI-native era. But as experts note, adoption alone doesn’t equal progress. What matters is who gets to benefit, how equitably tools are deployed and whether they actually deliver better outcomes.

“The question isn’t whether AI is coming to schools. It already has,” Suhail said. “The question now is whether we’re building systems that serve all learners — or just some of them.”

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