Building sustainable futures: Responsible development of AI-enabled open educational resources as digital public goods

This article explores the transformative potential of open educational resources (OER) as digital public goods (DPG) to foster the responsible development and use of artificial intelligence (AI). Guided by the United Nations’ Common Agenda, Global Digital Compact and agenda for open solutions, along with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s Recommendation on OER, the ROAM-X framework and the FAIR principles for open science, this article promotes the importance of inclusivity, equity and global collaboration in tackling both local and global challenges. It also advocates for non-commercial, shared infrastructures that democratise knowledge and technology, ensuring they are secure, ethical and accessible to all communities. Current OER infrastructures and policy ecosystems remain fragmented and face significant challenges, as they are distributed across disconnected repositories and lack consistent metadata, limiting their reusability and accessibility. These barriers are exacerbated by inequities in internet access, and limited collaboration between institutions and nations, resulting in an uneven global OER landscape. To address these issues, the authors propose the creation of integrated and open platforms that position OER as global public goods, grounded in open principles and standards. This approach will foster resilient, collaborative, responsible and inclusive infrastructures that prioritise gender, linguistic and cultural diversity, and empower communities worldwide, thus democratising access to knowledge and enabling a more equitable technological future.