SOT XX Islamabad, part of the School of Tomorrow (SOT) series run by the Beaconhouse Group, will take place on Saturday, 24 October 2026 at the Ambiance Boutique Art Hotel in Islamabad, with a schedule that includes several sessions on artificial intelligence (AI) and digital safety. The programme runs from 11:30 am to around 5 pm across two halls and brings together speakers from education, the arts, media, law enforcement, and technology policy. Registration is free through the organisers’ registration portal. Alongside sessions on climate, geopolitics, and culture, the event features partner sessions with the Lahore Biennale Foundation and Tabadlab, which together give AI a larger place on the agenda than any other single theme.
The first AI-related session, Who Owns Imagination?, is a musical conversation with the Lahore Biennale Foundation scheduled for 11:30 am in Hall 1. It combines live performances with moderated discussion on whether generative AI can be a collaborator for artists and whether prediction can amount to imagination, and it asks whose cultures and archives these systems draw on. Sehr Ali Dada will moderate, with Ali Azmat, Daniyal Noorani, Faisal Anwar, Zainab Sikander, and Sara Khan taking part. At 12:30 pm in Hall 2, a panel titled Rethinking Learning will examine how schools should prepare students as AI takes on routine cognitive work, with speakers Uzma Yousuf of Cambridge University Press & Assessment, Saad Wasim of the University of London, and Nassir Kasuri of Beaconhouse, moderated by Dr Faisal Mushtaq.
Children’s safety online is the focus of Growing Up Online, a fireside chat at 2:50 pm in Hall 1 that asks who is responsible for keeping children safe on platforms designed to capture attention. The session description cites UNICEF as saying nearly one in 16 internet-using children in Pakistan experienced technology-facilitated exploitation and abuse in 2026, and notes that stigma and fear of blame often keep harm hidden. Speakers are rule of law expert Omar Maniar, Additional Inspector General Humayun Bashir Tarar, and National Commission on the Rights of Child Chairperson Ayesha Raza Farooq. The discussion will cover accountability among platforms, the state, schools, and parents, whether age limits and bans work, and how regulation can keep pace with technology and be enforced.
At the same time, in Hall 2, SOT and Tabadlab will hold a debate on the motion that AI is making us less human. It will ask whether growing reliance on AI weakens human connection, judgement, and creativity, or whether it frees people to focus on what matters most. Gulalai Khan of LUMS, Dr Athar Osama of LITE Lab and STEMx, Usama Khilji of Bolo Bhi, and Sidra Jalil of InspireMill are among the speakers, with Hiba Fatima of Tabadlab moderating. A separate fireside chat at 1:40 pm, The Price of Perfection, will look at how AI-generated faces and beauty filters shape standards of appearance. Since several sessions run in parallel, attendees will need to choose between them, and outcomes from the sessions will only be known once they conclude.
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