This Open Access book examines digitalisation, artificial intelligence (AI), and automation in education, with a particular focus on their implications for human agency, equity, and institutional futures. The chapters reflect a shared commitment to centring the human in conversations about educational futures, not as a moral constant, but as a provisional figure whose meaning is always under negotiation. They examine how power, inequality, and ideology shape not only the uses of technology, but also the interpretive frames through which its presence is rendered meaningful. They call not just for critique, but for ways of paying attention that remain attuned to context and responsive to the complexities of technological life.

The topics and critical framings in this book are of particular interest to readers concerned with the sociopolitical and ethical dimensions of digital transformation in education. Rather than celebrating digitalisation and AI as inherently progressive, this book interrogates who benefits, who is marginalised, and what is lost in the rush toward automation and algorithmic governance. Readers gain a deeper, more critical understanding of how digitalisation, AI, and automation are reshaping education, not just in terms of tools and systems, but in relation to power, ethics, and the human condition.

David C.L. Lim is the Founding Director of the Centre for Digital Education Futures (CENDEF), Open University Malaysia (OUM). His scholarly interests and research straddle cultural studies and critical studies in open, distance, and digital education (ODDE). He is also the Founding Editor of Inspired, OUM’s popular journal on the 3Ps—practice, policy, and philosophy—of ODDE at inspired.oum.edu.my, and serves as an editorial board member of the Southeast Asian Review of English (SARE) and the Journal of Open, Distance, and Digital Education (JODDE), and is a member of the Centre for Open Education Research (COER) at the Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg, Germany.

Mohd Tajudin Md Ninggal is the Deputy Vice Chancellor/Vice President (Academic and Research) at Open University Malaysia (OUM). His research encompasses open, distance, and digital education on the one hand, and counselling and psychology on the other. He is the visionary behind Malaysia’s pioneering online Smart Psychology System, inaugurated in 2003. Known as TAJMA, this system comprises two bilingual software applications: TAJMA Personality Profile Plus (TPP+) and TAJMA Career Interest Profile Plus (TCIP+). Throughout his career, he has conducted psychometric profiling and assessments for more than 50,000 individuals, spanning diverse age groups, genders, and occupational sectors.