The following are the outputs of the captioning taken during an IGF intervention. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> ADAM INGLE: Hi, everyone. Thank you for joining this panel session workshop called Elevating Children's Voices in AI Design, sponsored by the LOZ Group. And joining me is the Alan Turing Institute, and also the Centre for AI and Robotics, and the Crime and Justice Research Institute.
We have an excellent workshop to hear about the impact of AI on children. And also hear from young people themselves about their experiences and hopes. This is a quick run. We will start with a message from the children about their views on generative AI and hear some of the latest research from Stephen Balkam, the founder and CEO of FOSI, the Family Online Safety Institute. Maria Eira, AI expert at The Centre for AI and Robotics and the (?) University. Mhairi Aitken on the panel for the Alan Turing Institute.
Please feel free to ask questions. We will take them in the room and online, and also have a young person to share her insights and ask the panel questions herself.
Without further adieu, let's get underway. We will start with this video message from young people across the U.K. We are not disclosing names, just for safety reasons, but please play the message and the video when you are ready.
(Inaudible)
>> I feel as if AI is the future, but must be monitored.
>> And I find AI really fun, but sometimes it is not safe with children because it gives bad advice.
(Inaudible)
>> The choices not only affect our technology but our lives and the next generation. Young people like me must be part of this conversation. We represent not just the future; we are here now. Our voices, experiences and hopes must matter and shape in this technology.
>> I feel adolescents should listen to children, because we have lots of good ideas with AI.
>> Tides follow the shape of the land, so we must shape that and we must set the direction and we must decide together the kind of world that we want to live. Because if we don't, that tide may wash away everything that we value most. (?) Privacy, truth and even choice.
>> I hope this has incredible promise but won't be fulfilled unless we have trust. Protect and respect and clear vision of the kind of world we want to create together.
>> ADAM INGLE: Thank you so much to all the people that put together the pretty powerful messages, from our perspective at the LEGO Group. And it is great to see such eloquent young people with real ideas. And we are here to discuss them more. I will pass over to Stephen Balkam to talk about his latest research from the Family Institute about the impact of AI on children.
>> STEPHEN BALKAM: Thank you, Adam. Thank you for convening and bringing us here, really appreciate it. For those of you who are not familiar, the Family Online Safety Institute, FOSI, is a 501(c)3 charitable organisation based in the United States, but we work globally. Our mission is to make online safer for kids and families. We work in three Ps: of policy, practices, parenting. Enlightened policy, good practices and digital parentings, the most difficult parts of this, where we try to empower parents to confidently navigate the web with kids. The web is increasingly AI‑infused; value, I say.
I want to begin by just saying that two years ago, in 2023, we conducted a three‑country study called Generative AI, Emerging Habits, Hopes and Fears. At the time we believe it was the first survey done around generative AI, given that ChatGPT had emerged only a few months before.
And we talked to parents and teens in the U.S. , Germany and Japan. Some of the results surprised us. You can see in the slide, and I will talk to those data points. Teens thought parents knew more about generative AI than they did. With previous trends, particular in early days of the web and Web 2.0 and social media, kids were always ahead of their parents in terms of the technology. But in this case a large, sizable share of teens in all three countries recorded their parents had a better understanding than they did. And we dug a little deeper and found, of course, many of the parents were struggling to figure how to use generative AI at work or at least figure out before generative AI took over their jobs.
Anyway, that was the first interesting trend. Parents, for their parts used it for analytical tasks, such as a search engine and language translator. That's only increased over the last couple of years.
Teens mostly were looking for efficiency‑boosting tasks such as proofreading and summarizing long texts to make them shorter and faster. And we have already seen interesting developments in those two years where ChatGPT is -- actually instead of used to proofread and increase efficiency, teens are increasingly using it to do their work, their essay, homework, whatever.
In terms of concerns, job loss was the number one concern for both parents and teens. Also the spread of false information, which has only been accelerating since we did that study. Other concerns, loss of critical thinking skills was the parent's number three, whereas kids were more concerned about new forms of cyber bullying, which, again, is something we have been seeing since we did that study.
There is a lot of excitement too. Obviously concerns, but parents and teens both shared and optimism that generative AI will, above all else, will help them learn new things. Very excited also for AI's potential to in science and health care and reduce boring tasks in health care and education.
Then we asked them who is responsible to ensure teens had a safe AI experience. Interestingly enough, parents believed they had to take the greatest responsibility for ensuring their teen's safety. This was particularly true in the United States, where, I'm afraid to say, we have less trust in our government to guide and to pass laws.
Other countries were more heavily reliant on their own governments and tech companies. Then we asked the question, what do parents and teens want to learn and what are the topics that would help them navigate these conversations and address their concerns about gen‑AI more broadly. Top of the list was transparency of data practices. Secondly, steps to reveal what's behind gen‑AI and how data is sourced and whether it can be trusted was a key element.
Another area they felt that industry should take note of, that data transparency is top‑of‑mind for parents and teens, and the company should take strides to be more forthcoming about how data is gathered and used, which we will hear about in the next presentation.
Fast‑forward, we conducted the Online Safety Survey, called Connected and Protected, in the United States at the end of 2024 and into 2025. This was a survey more about online safety trends in general, but we did include questions about gen‑AI in the research. A basic question, do you think AI will have a positive or negative impact on each of the following areas. These areas were creativity, academics, media literacy, online safety and cyber bullying.
And in each of these categories, kids were more likely to be optimistic about AI's impact on society. Think about that. The kids felt more optimistic than their parents that AI was going to have a positive impact.
Now parents weren't necessarily pessimistic across the board. About 50% thought it had impact, but 60% of parents and kids thought there was a negative impact. Where we see stitched together videos, a kid's face put onto all sorts of awful graphic images that are then spread around the school.
When it comes to online safety, parents and kids were split, with just over half of both groups reporting that AI would have a positive impact on online safety. When comparing data from Wave 1 with Wave 2, we saw parents in Wave 2 were likely to see their kids use AI including school projects, image generation, brain‑storming and more.
In the first wave we asked participants to identify if images were real or AI‑generated. Each respondent was presented with three images from a lineup of six to ensure accurate data. Less than half of respondents correctly identified two or more images. You're going to see an example of that in a moment. Less than 10% of respondents correctly identified all three images. We will see how well you guys do in a minute.
On the bright side, over four or five respondents correctly identified at least one image. Again, this was survey was done before Google's video generator came out, Veo, which is just mind‑boggling how fast the developments are in this space.
Some of the videos and images that have come out of that video‑generator are quite astounding. Based on the study, FOSI recommends the following, technology companies be much more transparent about AI technology, providing families with a clear explanation why a generative AI system produced a certain answer, why an algorithm is recommending certain content and what the limitations of AI tools like chatbots are. Industry must learn from past mistakes and design tools with children in mind, not as an after‑thought. And industry needs to fund research and programmes that will help children learn AI literacy, so they are able to discern real content from AI‑generated content. And make informed decisions based on that knowledge.
Now I will test you guys on these three images. Have a look. Just have a show of hands, I don't know how we will do this online. How many of you think that the first image is real? Any takers for real? Okay. How many for AI‑generated? All right, more real than AI. Second one. AI, real. All right. Real or AI? All right. Well, you guys did pretty well. The first is a real painting. I have the actual citation, if you want to find out who the artist was. Yes, the second two were gen‑AI‑generated. Interestingly enough, more men than women thought two was real. Maybe that was wishful thinking.
(Laughter)
>> STEPHEN BALKHAM: Make your own conclusions. 80% thought this was real, and her earrings didn't match. I didn't see that, so back to you.
>> ADAM INGLE: Thanks, Stephen. I performed poorly. Next up, Maria, an expert at the United Nations ‑‑ the United Nations Crime Research Institution and Centre of AI Robotics, please take it away. She is online.
>> MARIA EIRA: Hello, can you see my slides? Everything is working?
>> ADAM INGLE: Yes.
>> MARIA EIRA: Perfect, thank you so much, Adam. Good afternoon, Adam. First of all, I would like to thank you, Adam, and the LEGO Group to be part of this interesting workshop. I work for UNICRI, focusing on reducing crime and violence. Asnd the Centre has particular mandate to understand how AI contributes to reduce crime and also be ‑‑ how it can be used by malicious actors. In partnership with Disney for this and we focus on AI but, in particular, generative AI.
To start this project, we were trying to understand the parent's perspectives on the use and impact of generative AI on adults as FOSI was doing. So we distributed a survey worldwide. We see the survey was targeting parents and received replies from 19 countries across Europe, Asia, Africa and The Americas.
We just published this three days ago, including conclusions from the survey. It is free access. You can access it via the QR code. But also brought you here. The main conclusions from this survey.
So we had two main conclusions. So the first one, we understood there is a lack of awareness from parents, and the low communication between parents and their children on how adolescents are using generative AI tools and we were targeting parents of adults of 13 to 17 years old.
So on the left we have a graph ‑‑ I don't know if you can see it, but I will describe a little bit. This graph is parent's insights on teenager's generative AI use across different activities. So on the first smaller graph we have ‑‑ the activity is to search or get information about the topic. So we can see more than 80 percent of parents are reporting their kids are using generative AI to search information about the topic. They are also using it quite often to help with school assignments.
So for more academic purposes, we can see parents are aware their kids are using generative AI. However, for more personal uses, such as using generative AI as a companion or to ask for help to personal or health problems, the most popular reply was "I disagree" so they feel their kids never use generative AI for the more personal purposes and second most popular reply was "I don't know ." So this confirms parents are becoming more aware, but still we can see as a worldwide distribution, a lot of parents still don't know if their children are using generative AI for more personal uses.
The second conclusion, and we can see here on the graph on the right. So we started by ‑‑ I'm giving the conclusion. Parents feel more positive about the impact this technology can have on their children's development. So we can see on the graph on the right.
So we have started by dividing parents according to their familiarity with generative AI tools so divided into regular users and use the words generative AI every day or a few times a week. Sporadic users used generative AI a few times per month or less, and unfamiliar audience that had never try or heard this technology.
We can see the regular users, so the yellow bars here, feel much more positive on the impact that the technology can have on critical thinking, on their career, on their social work and also on their general impact that this technology can have on kids' development while parents were negative in all this field, which shows when parents are familiar with this, they see differently. Thinking and viewing in a positive way helps children to use it in a more positive way and not fearing this technology so much.
So besides engaging with parents, we also engaged with children and we organized the workshop in high school to collect perspectives from the adolescents.
I brought here some interesting comments and feedback from children. So when we asked them where did they learn about generative AI, they mentioned friends, they mentioned TikTok, my 20‑year‑old brother. So we can see they are not learning how to use these in school or from other trustworthy sources, let's say.
When we ask them what is one thing adults should know about how teenagers are using generative AI, their replies were: they use it to cheat in school, kids use AI to make everything, or adults should know more about it.
I think these were also very interesting to see their feedback. And there's lots to develop the main outcomes of this project. So we basically produced two AI literacy resources launched in two weeks at the AI For Good summit. On the left we have a 3D animation for adolescents that explains what AI is, how generative AI works and, very importantly, that is not all the answers can be found in these chatbots. On the right we have a guide for parents on AI literacy to support them in guiding their children to use this technology in a responsible way.
So to communicate. So we focus a lot on the communication, which was something we concluded from the initial survey. Focusing on the communication about the potential risks and also to explore the benefits of this technology together to make parents engage with children and to learn together. Because we are all learning on this. Technology is really advancing at a very fast pace, so we will all need to be on top of this development.
So if you'd be interested, both resources also be available online soon, so if you'd like to receive them, just reach out to me. I’ll leave my email here. Also if you have any other question, I'm happy to reply. Thank you for your time and your attention.
(Applause)
>> ADAM INGLE: Thanks, Maria. Now we have Senior Ethics Fellow at the Turing Institute to discuss research LEGO Group was proud to sponsor.
>> MHAIRI AITKEN: Thank you, Adam. I'm excited to be speaking. I'm a Senior Research Fellow. The Alan Turing is the National Institute for Data Science. And at the Turing Institute, I have the great privilege of leading the topic of Children and AI. The central rationale of our work at the Turing Institute is recognition that children are likely to be the group most impacted by advances in AI, but simultaneously, the group least represented in decision-making about ways those technologies are designed, developed and deployed. Also in terms of policy-making and regulations to AI. We think that needs to change. Children have a right to a say in matters that affect their lives, and AI is clearly a matter affecting their lives today and will increasingly do so in the future.
Over the last four years, our teens on the AI team have been working to develop approaches to meaningfully bring children and young people into processes around the future of AI technologies.
We have had a series with a number of collaborations including with UNICEF, Scottish Airlines, Children's Parliament and LEGO Group. I want to share headline finding of the generative AI use of children and children's well‑being and share messages from the Children's AI Summit, an event held earlier this year.
Firstly, from recent research supported by the LEGO Group. And looked at generative AI use on children, particularly between 8 and 12. There were two work packages. The first work package was a national survey. So we surveyed around 800 children between 8‑12 as well as parents and caregivers and also teachers across the U.K. This revealed around quarter of children, 22% between 8‑12, have recorded using generative AI technologies. The majority of teachers, 3 out of 5, reported using generative AI in their work. But found really stark differences between uses of AI in private schools. Children use AI but also report an understanding about generative AI. This points to potentially important issues around equity and access to the benefits of these technologies within education.
We found children with additional support needs were more likely to report using generative AI for communication and for connection. Also from the teacher survey, we found there was significant interest to support children with additional learning needs. This was a finding that came out strongly in Work Package 2 of this research. Work Package 2 was direct engagement with children 9‑11 through a series of workshops and private schools in Scotland. We found children were really excited about the opportunity to learn about generative AI. They were really excited about the ways generative AI could potentially be used to support them in education. Again, a strong interest, particularly in ways generative AI could be used to support children with additional learning needs.
We found also in these workshops where we invited children to take part in creative activities and gave them the option of using generative AI tools or more traditional tactile art materials, we found overwhelmingly children chose to use traditional tactile materials.
You will see on the bottom, one of the sentiments expressed was this feeling that art is actually real and children felt they couldn't say that about AI art. Because the computer did it, not them. This reveals important insights into the choices children make about using digital technologies and reminder those choices are not just about additional technology but alternatives and context and environments in which children are making those choices.
Children also highlighted important concerns around impacts of generative AI. And I want to flag some briefly now. One of the major themes was a concern around bias and representation in models and outputs of models. We were using generative AI tools and open AI's generative AI and DALL-E. It would default create a person white and predominantly male. Children identified these and were concerned and upset about this. Particularly for children of colour, who were not represented through the outputs of those models we found children became upset when they didn't feel represented and in many cases children that didn't feel represented chose not to use generative AI in the future and didn't want to use generative AI in the future. It is not just about the impact on individual children but adoption of tools and how representation feeds into that.
Another big area of concern was the environmental impacts of generative AI. This is something we found has come out consistently in discussions around AI where children have awareness or access information about the generative AI models and often choose not to use those models. We found in these workshops where children learned about the environmental impact, particularly consumption of AI models and carbon footprint, they chose not to use those in the future and chose this area where they wanted policymakers to address environmental impacts of models but provide transparent, accessible information about the environmental impacts of those models. Finally, big concerns around the way the models produced inappropriate and sometimes harmful outputs and children wanted to ensure they had access to age‑appropriate models and wouldn't risk exposure to harmful or inappropriate content.
Finally, I wanted to share messages from the children's AI summit, an event we held in February of this year. An event ‑‑ my team at the Turing, in partnership with the Queen Mary Group and LEGO's Elevate Great in the UI. And children had a full day of exploration, expressing hopes and fears of AI and setting out messages they wanted to see at the AI action summit in Paris.
At the summit we produced the children's manifesto for the future of AI. And I would encourage you to have a read. It is written entirely in the world of children and sets out their messages, what they want world leaders, policymakers to know about what they think.
I want to finish with quote from children that took part in the summit. Their message is for you all here today about what needs to be taken aboard when thinking of the role of children in discussions. First from Ethan, who is 16. He says: You will write the laws but we will bear the costs. Hear us, engage with us. AI may be artificial but the consequences of your choices are real. Next (?) All aged 11 and printed jointly at the children's AI summit. They said: We don't want AI to make the world a place where only a few have everything and a more have less. Make sure AI helps make everyone to make a safe, kind, fair world.
I hope that sums up the ethos of children; that we all need to get behind and make a reality. Thank you.
(Applause)
>> ADAM INGLE: Thanks, Mhairi and Stephen and Maria. Exciting research findings. We will move towards a panel session now. So we will take questions from the audience, both in‑person and online. So if you'd like to think about some questions, feel free to then ask them. If you are online, you can ask the online moderator, Lisa, who will ask those. We are waiting for a young representative to join. I think there's been technical difficulties, so hopefully she will join us soon so we can hear from her.
To start things off, we heard a lot in the research, kids are already using AI, using AI across multiple contexts for multiple purposes. I want to take a step back and just ask, are children ready for AI or is AI ready for children? This is an open question to all the panelists here.
>> MHAIRI AITKEN: I will give that a go. The challenge, we know children of all ages are already interacting. That starts with infants, preschool kids playing with smart devices and smart toys through generative AI and way it is used online and social media. A lot of the problem is these are used by children and young people of all ages but not designed for them. We know that the ways children interact with AI systems are often very different from how adults engage with those tools, traditional tools more generally and different from how designers and developers anticipate those tools might be used.
I think possibly a risk they put kind of the burden or expectation on children and young people themselves to kind of police those online interactions to take approaches to be safe online, whereas actually the burden has to be on the developers, policymakers and regulators to make sure those systems are safe and there are age‑appropriate children systems available for children to access and benefit from.
>> STEPHEN BALKAM: This feels like deja vu all over again. I was very much involved in Web 1.0 in the mid‑90s. And it became clear the Worldwide Web was not designed with kids in mind and had to retrofit and create parental controls for the first time but never really caught up. Web 2.0 around 2005‑2006. Sites like MySpace and Facebook came out. Once again, not with kids in mind. We are just repeating that one more time with this AI revolution. There is a great deal of concern, particularly around the amount of what kids will do in terms of trusting chatbots, for instance. We are seeing a lot of emotional attachments of quite young kids talking to chatbots, thinking that they are real. Sort of unloading their own personal thoughts to them.
For older teens and college‑based kids, the fact that they are using GenAI, doing homework and essays, meaning they are not developing critical thinking skills but going straight to generative AI for their results. That probably is of greater concern.
>> ADAM INGLE: Thank you, Stephen. Maria?
>> MARIA EIRA: I agree definitely with everything that was said. Not just the AI systems are not ready or kids are not ready for AI, but the whole ‑‑ the whole environment in terms of AI literacy. Most of the people don't really understand what is AI. How does it work. Is it like a type of magic. But at the end of the day, it is actually computations and statistical models.
So there is not just technology that was not developed but is the whole environment. So in terms of AI literacy in schools and so on.
>> ADAM INGLE: Thank you. I've definitely got more questions, but I can see we have someone in the audience that would like to ask questions. Please introduce yourself.
>> Hi, Maria (?) from The Data Initiative, hope you can hear me well. So we are The Data Initiative. We have a youth project, engaging young people for a couple of years. And I wanted to thank you all for the amazing presentations and amazing work you are doing. I think it is actually very, very important we have all these stats, numbers, stories, experiences. Thank you all for starting with the video from children and closing up with quotes.
This introduction is just to say we are re‑starting a new phase in our project and starting to focus on influencers. Not just kids that are becoming influencers; children that are sometimes turned into influencers by their parents that have also mind‑blowing stats. Adults that are becoming influencers that are directly influencing children not only to consume and buy their products or other products, but we are also looking into AI agents as influencers in this digital space. And that as I think one of the girls I was ‑‑ sharing her story was saying, it is not just that they are influencing or that are generally affecting their lives ‑‑ digital lives but their very concrete lives and relationships they have with each other.
I just wanted to ask, and Stephen was already mentioning a bit around the influence of other children and maybe social media, and if you have questions or research done around how are influencing ‑‑ influencers shaping the space and how children and youth are experiencing social media, in general. Then how did you start, or if you started to ask about AI agents and how is that influencing particularly relationships they have in real life, again. I think that was a lot of questions but, again, thanks so much.
>> STEPHEN BALKAM: I will try to respond. It is hard. No, we haven't responded to AI bots being an influencing factor. We are anecdotally seeing kids, teens, young adults and adults using AI for therapy. Literally talking through hours at a time deep emotional issues they have and getting responses from ChatGPT and others in a way that is very positive and self‑reinforcing but also extremely, potentially dangerous in the sense that, you know, an artificial intelligence bot will not know ‑‑ is not human and will not be able to pick up on body cues and all the rest of it and may not actually be able to challenge you in a way that a physical ‑‑ real human therapist will. One other point I get to quickly, the whole influencing world, there is new legislation that's been popping up in the United States, at least, that will at least compensate kids who have been part of a family VLOGs all their childhood, a bit like kid movie stars in the 30s, so at least getting compensation and a right to delete their videos that they had no true consent to be a part of when they turn 18.
But there is a broader societal question about monetizing our kids. We are not in favour of that. Particularly because there is no way that a 7-, 8-, 9-year-old can give consent. Yes, please film me every day and post this online so I can go through college and you don't have to pay, Mom and Dad.
Maybe we will talk later, because you had a lot of different points in there.
>> MHAIRI AITKEN: Maybe I can pick up on this context. Influencing is not something we necessarily looked at on our research, mostly focused on 8- to 12‑year‑olds, not to say that 12‑year‑olds beginning to be on social media, but AI companion is an area we urgently need to get to grips with. More and more of the personas clearly marketed towards children and young children. And we don't fully know what the impacts might be, but there's growing research. We need more, more action to be taken on this. Including AI companions marketed as addressing challenges of loneliness but creating dependence or connection to something outside of society and community and potentially exacerbating challenges, which I think is a particular set of risks to address.
In the Children's AI summit, which children in the AI Summit between the ages of 8‑18 and Children's AI summit, there was a lot of interest in using possibly AI companions to support children in terms of mental health. There was a lot of interest in how that could be done, but what would it mean to design and develop tools in ways that are safe and had children's well‑being and mental health as a key element in design process. At the moment, tools are developed and promoted without children's well‑being and children's interests in mind in the development process, but they are increasingly relied on and used for those purposes. So yes, an area we are seeing a lot of interest in from children and young people, but with recognition this needs to be done responsibly, safely and cautiously.
>> ADAM INGLE: Thanks. Leanda, I see you have a question.
>> LEANDRA-BARRINGTON-LEACH: Thanks, everyone, I'm Leanda‑Barrington‑Leach from the 5Rights Children's Foundation. Thanks for the research, absolutely fabulous. I could ask a lot of things and comment, but I wanted to take the opportunity, given what you are saying about the importance of designing AI with Children's Rights in mind, from the start of raising awareness that there are regulatory and technical tools. Particularly the Children in AI Design Code, which the Turing Institute contributed to, which brought AI and Children's Rights experts together over a long time through a technical protocol for innovation that puts Children's Rights at the centre. I just wanted to draw awareness to say we agree it is so important, but to know there are actually tools to make it happen, thank you.
>> ADAM INGLE: Thanks, Leanda.
>> LEANDRA BARRINGTON LEACH: Should AI ethics for children be separated from general AI ethics. The first question. Second, do you think there should be state‑level legislation policies targeting specifically children, thank you.
>> ADAM INGLE: Maria, I will pass, if you want to answer either of those questions.
>> MARIA EIRA: Yes, sure. Thank you for your question. It is very relevant, indeed. Definitely, yes. Children should have separated legislation. Separate legislation should target children, because children don't have exactly the same consent. Let's say for example the awareness of consent, there are several principles that cannot be fully applicable, from adults to children. So we definitely need to have the child's rights in mind when developing this legislation.
>> ADAM INGLE: Thanks, Maria, Stephen and Mhairi. Just one, two comments, because we do have ‑-
>> MHAIRI AITKEN: I agree, children have particular rights and unique needs and experiences that should be addressed. I guess one other part is, if we design this well for children and if we get the regulatory requirements right for children, this benefits well beyond children as well. An AI system that is designed with children in mind is also going to have benefits in terms of other vulnerable users. I think unique perspectives and considerations, but benefits go beyond that.
>> ADAM INGLE: Before I go to other questions, I want quick responses from the panel. Leanda mentioned the AI tool, to help companies think of building AI in child rights and well‑being way. What do you think are the research gaps? We've got tools like this. What is the one, to your mind, outstanding research gap that needs to be addressed before we can really be confident that there is a child‑centric approach to AI development? Just a quick question ‑‑ maybe reflect on that as we take other questions, then I will come back later. I do want to think about the research gaps and a path forward so let's take a question from this gentleman.
>> Hello, Joon Bak (?) from Youth NGO focusing on digital privacy. We wanted to focus on children's rights in AI, at least in context of privacy. There's been some legislation for them under the aim of protecting children's data. For example, safeguarding children online. There's been concerns about those kind of laws having privacy issues. I was wondering would there be some things that like ‑‑ under the aim of protecting children when comes to AI, for example, that could be other rights that could be in question or violate. Do you suppose anything to be aware?
>> ADAM INGLE: Talking about trade‑off in protecting Children's Rights and issues that might be developing. Stephen?
>> STEPHEN BALKAM: Pretty much I went back to 1995. We have been struggling with the dichotomy between safety and privacy since the beginning of the web. In other words, the more safe you are, perhaps the more you are giving up in terms of private information. Or the more private you are, maybe you are not as safe as you could be. So trying to find a way that balances both has been at the core, certainly of the work of my organisation, but many others. It is extremely hard for lawmakers to get that balance right. Then, if you come from the U.S., you then have this other access, which is called free expression, which adds another layer of complexity, too. Because you want kids to be private and safe but one of the five rights, by the way, is the right to say what you want to be able to say.
So it's just going to be something which I don't think we will ever completely get right. We are going to constantly have to compromise. But I don't think it is beyond our ability to reach those compromises.
>> ADAM INGLE: For time, I will move on to this gentleman.
>> Hi, my name is Ryan. I'm 17, a Youth Ambassador in Hong Kong. We are advocating for digital sustainability and access in Hong Kong. Thank you for the wonderful presentations. My question is, AI for people with learning disabilities was raised as significant prospect by children 8‑12. How can generative AI be further leveraged for support and inclusion for persons with disabilities?
>> ADAM INGLE: That is a key finding for your research, Mhairi.
>> MHAIRI AITKEN: It's come out in our research an area they are excited about potential and want to see AI developed in ways that will support children with additional support needs and with disabilities. I guess what is important, particularly in the education context for children with additional learning needs, there's huge promise here. Teachers in our study recognise that. Children in our study recognise that.
Again, I think some of the challenges or limitations are, there are a lot of tools that are pushed and promoted that are not necessarily beginning with a sound understanding of the challenges they are seeking to address or sound understanding of the needs of children with additional learning needs. I think we need to start developing these technologies from that place. You know, if we want to develop children with additional learning needs, it needs to be grown with a sound understanding of what the needs and challenges are. Maybe generative AI can provide tools for the solution but not always or not necessarily. We have to start with identifying problems and challenges and develop tools to responsively and effectively address those challenges. That requires expertise from teachers, children and specialists to guide the development of those tools and technologies. It is definitely an area where there is huge promise and where it could be used really effectively and really valuably.
>> ADAM INGLE: Thank you. Great to have a youth representative at the IGF. I mean, my gosh, I was probably playing video games when I was 17 rather than going to international forums, impressive. Lisa?
>> LISA: I have a question from Grace Thompson, CDIP. How is -- INCIR ‑‑
>> ADAM INGLE: UNICRI.
>> Thank you. Other entities in panels working with national government officials on capacity‑building, principles, teams and ecosystem to prepare adults in protecting our children and adolescents?
>> MARIA EIRA: Thank you for your question, Grace. As I was showing, we are developing AI literacy resources for parents, so we will try to disseminate this as much as possible. So it is physically recommendations for parents to guide their children on the use of these technologies, so this is one thing. Then we are also trying to work with governments and particularly with the judges, law enforcement to promote AI literacy basically, so we do a lot of capacity‑building to law enforcement officers worldwide to explain what is AI and use in it responsible way.
So guidelines developed with Interpol, more on the law enforcement side. We would love to explore more to other representatives from the government and try implement AI literacy workshops and programmes in schools.
So we have started this workshop in a school in the Netherlands, which was also to collect adolescent's perspectives, but also we have a competence on explaining what AI is, risks and benefits and how some best practices to use in it the best way. We would love to try ‑‑ would love to scale up this. We are right now in conversations with Netherlands and other countries to understand if we can really develop a full programme that can be implemented in schools. But it is everything that is being developed. Technology is really recent. Everyone is trying to be prepared for this and, yeah, we are still working on that.
>> ADAM INGLE: Thanks Maria. One final question from the room, then I will do a quick lightning round among panelists to answer what is one research area we still need to explore to move towards child‑centric AI and what is one thing companies can do right now to make AI more appropriate for children. Quick answers. A lady here.
>> My name is (?) From the One Foundation, just like Ryan. I see a big issue in children communicating with AI about personal issues, as children are in a way more vulnerable situation and position. AI is like the bigger person in that conversation. So my question is, how can we design AI so that it doesn't increase, like, that power imbalance between the child and the all‑knowing AI?
>> STEPHEN BALKAN: I didn't get the end. Please repeat.
>> How can we design AI that it doesn't ‑‑ like the dependency of the child is increased and there is no power imbalance between the child and the AI?
>> MHAIRI AITKEN: Yeah, I think in actions, one thing that is absolutely crucial is the transparency around nature of AI system and around how data might being collected through interactions and potentially collected by the model to train future model or collected by the organisation that the company developing and owning those models. If I can tie it into your question around what is needed, because I think it is actually related, is that critical AI literacy. We hear about the importance of AI literacy and increasing understandings of AI. But what I think is really important is that critical literacy. So improving understandings of not just technically how the systems work but actually how business models behind them affect Children's Rights and the impact the systems have. I think that's where we need more research. But what is needed to enable children to make informed choices about how they use those systems.
>> ADAM INGLE: You tied in the answer to both questions. Out of time. Stephen.
>> STEPHEN BALKAM: What she said.
>> ADAM INGLE: That is easy. Maria, one thing we could do in research and one thing companies could do right now?
>> MARIA EIRA: Yeah, so in research, we are still understanding, right, the long‑term impact of this technology. We still don't know and literature also reflects this. We have conflicting results, some papers saying AI can improve critical thinking, others saying AI can decrease critical thinking –
>> MARIA EIRA: So I think we are in a period where we can understand exactly what will be the long‑term impact of this technology. So yeah, what companies should do ‑‑ I think the girl in the video in beginning said everything. So the goal cannot be the profits. It must be the people. So I think if companies really focus on the children in developing these tools, targeting and having the childrens in mind, we can develop good tools for everyone.
>> ADAM INGLE: Thanks, Maria. The goal should not be the profit, but people. That is a great lesson coming out of this session.
That is all we have time for. Thank you for joining us in the room and online. Please, if you've got any more questions, feel free to approach Stephen, Mhairi or get in contact with Maria. Thank you to the young people that engaged for this session. And thank you from the LEGO Group as well. We will end it there. We will see you soon, bye.
>> MARIA EIRA: Thank you.
