Last week, along with AI Pioneers partner George Bekiaridis, I attended a Working Group meeting at the Council of Europe headquarters in Strasbourg. In a LinkedIn post, George explains what the meeting was about.

I'm honored to be contributing to a vital initiative at the heart of European education policy! Last week, I participated in the inaugural meeting of the Council of Europe working group tasked with developing a new Committee of Ministers Recommendation on Vocational Education and Training (VET) and a Culture of Democracy.

Read about the first meeting here: Council of Europe Newsroom - First meeting on new VET & Democracy Recommendation

This new Recommendation is poised to be a landmark instrument. It recognizes that democratic citizenship isn't just for academic pathways – it's absolutely fundamental for every learner, including those in vocational education and training. Empowering VET students with core democratic competences is crucial for building resilient, inclusive, and participatory societies across Europe.

My specific focus within this working group centers on a critical intersection: The role of Artificial Intelligence (AI)in fostering (or potentially challenging) these core democratic competences within VET contexts.

Why is this so important?

1. AI Literacy as a Democratic Competence: VET graduates will work in environments increasingly shaped by AI. Understanding how AI works, its biases, its potential for surveillance or discrimination, and how to use it ethically and critically is no longer optional – it's a core component of digital citizenship and democratic engagement.
2. Mitigating AI Risks in VET: We must proactively address how algorithmic bias in career guidance tools, automated assessment, or workplace monitoring could undermine equity, fairness, and learner autonomy – values central to a democratic culture.
3. Preparing for the AI-Infused Workplace: VET must equip learners not just with technical skills for jobs involving AI, but also with the critical thinking, ethical reasoning, and collaborative skills needed to navigate AI's societal impacts responsibly.

I'm excited to continue this journey and contribute perspectives on how we can harness the potential of technology while safeguarding the democratic values that underpin our societies, starting within our vocational education systems.

About the Image

'Woven Dialogues' captures the artistry of a traditional weaver from Dharamsala, blending heritage with digital manipulation to explore how dialogue about technology evolves in the modern world. Central to the work is the technique of text blanching—removing or editing text from the original image—which symbolizes the fragility and erasure of cultural narratives and workers' voices as they are rewritten or obscured in conversations about digital transformation. The yellow classification boxes superimposed on the weaving process represent how technological systems often categorise and segment complex human practices, determining which elements are considered valuable in digital advancement. Like a textile that requires all threads to create a cohesive whole, meaningful digital dialogues require the integration of diverse perspectives—including those of traditional craftspeople who are often excluded from technological conversations. This image was submitted as part of the Digital Dialogues Art Competition, which was run in partnership with the ESRC Centre for Digital Futures at Work Research Centre (Digit) and supported by the UKRI ESRC.