Wouldn’t you agree that having a child in the family is a chance to re-live the time of our lives that we don’t have any clear recollection of? It is both endearing and amusing to see their babbling and cooing evolve into first words like ‘ma-ma’ and ‘pa-pa’, just like it would've once happened for us.

Baby blogs, too, will tell you that these speech milestones have been common across generations. But as you’d have already observed, there are certain words in their formative vocabulary that were certainly missing from ours; it's not uncommon to hear distorted versions of words like Alexa or Siri among the magical first words of toddlers, thanks to their voice-enabled smartphones, tablets, or smart speakers.

The impact is profound

A unique relationship with voice assistants is only the first of many signs that children are greatly influenced by technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, which are increasingly being used to advance the capabilities of machines and give them human attributes. This humanisation of AI gives it anthropomorphic projections and the impact is very profound on children who are only just starting to shape their views on the world around them.

And yet, the impact is not just limited to cases where the children engage directly with AI. Children’s lives and well-being are also indirectly impacted by automated decision-making systems that determine issues as varied as welfare subsidies, quality of healthcare, education access, and their families’ loan applications. A recent case in point is the grading controversy in the United Kingdom that brought protestors out on the streets, chanting “f**k the algorithm.”

In case you have forgotten the furore that was caused over algorithmic bias in the A-level exams in the UK last year, here’s a quick recap. As the pandemic struck the world in 2020, the UK decided to scrap final exams and instead use algorithms to predict the scores based on past performances. When the final grades were announced on 13 August, there was a huge disparity between the final grades and expected grades for many students, especially those from poorer and backward communities. The algorithm had clearly given discriminatory outcomes, keeping many students from gaining admissions into their preferred colleges.

The need for child-centric AI

Even though their lives are deeply shaped by technological forces such as AI, children remain a group that is often overlooked during any meaningful deliberation on emerging technologies.

Given the growing percolation of digital devices in the daily lives of young kids, they are creating a digital footprint – a trail that will follow them for all their years. And while this is perceived as a possible risk, along with concerns of data privacy, there are some undeniable benefits of technology – AI in particular – for the young ones, in areas such as learning, problem solving, critical thinking, and so on.

It is in light of these challenges and opportunities that AI presents for children that they deserve a seat at any table that determines how they will interact with it. As complex as it may be, AI is a strong force of socio-economic transformation and children need to be the protagonists of this change even if they don’t know much about AI.

Therefore, in an effort to throw off adult centrism in AI, UNICEF has sought to give due representation to children voices in its policymaking process.

UNICEF’s AI for Children project 

The healthy development of children is crucial to the future well-being of any society – there’s no two ways about it. UNICEF, therefore, believes that it would be catastrophic to allow the evolution of AI without considering children’s specific needs and rights. The AI for Children initiative aims to aid the protection and empowerment of children in interactions with AI systems and enable access to its benefits in all aspects of life.

“We should remember that the world of children is not one homogenous group. Children go through distinct developmental stages in their physical, emotional, cognitive, psychological capacities, and all of these factors influence the impact of AI on children,” explains project head Steven Vosloo.

As a part of this project, UNICEF, in partnership with the Government of Finland, has prepared a draft policy guidance as a complement to efforts to promote human-centric AI, by introducing a child rights lens. Notably, this guidance was co-developed through a broad consultative process with inputs from a variety of experts aiming to capture the local AI-related needs and realities of policymakers and businesses around the world, and included children’s voices in the process. Almost 250 children were consulted through nine workshops held in Brazil, Chile, South Africa, Sweden and the United States. 

In a recent webinar hosted by UNICEF, some of the facilitators of these workshops revealed how the kids, most of them aged between 12 to 16 years, displayed a profound sense of agency as they were given a safe space to assert their right to speak. It has, therefore, been aptly proven that it is entirely possible to ensure that the strong voices of young people can be heard on a topic as complex as AI.

A key project finding relates to the importance of digital education for adults. In order to develop responsible child-centred AI platforms, we must educate parents and families to enable them to provide support to kids. This awareness, however, needs to be generated through intergenerational collaboration, a means by which the children can help the older generation be at ease with the emerging technologies – technologies such as AI that the younger ones have lived and thrived with since the very beginning of their days in this age of AI.

• Further details about UNICEF's AI for Children project can be accessed here.

Image by Alexander Dummer on Unsplash