Exploring Children’s Views on AI Report Released
New research explores children’s current knowledge of artificial intelligence (AI), with the aim of involving them in its future development.
Children in Scotland are excited about the potential for AI to support children’s human rights, but have concerns about how it can be developed and used safely, according to a new report published today (Wednesday 17 May).
The report also shows that many of the children do not feel happy, healthy or safe online but that they did have a trusted adult to talk to about these concerns.
Researchers found that the children were familiar with the concept of AI being a part of their everyday lives but did not necessarily understand the detail of where and how it is used. Through this project the children learnt about uses of AI in healthcare, education, policing and entertainment.
Dr Mhairi Aitken, Ethics Research Fellow at The Alan Turing Institute and project lead: “AI is increasingly becoming part of children’s day-to-day lives. Our report provides a first step in exploring how children understand, experience, and engage with AI. We hope that it could provide much-needed guidance for policymakers and AI developers to inform future approaches to child-centred AI.”
The children, known as the ‘AI Team’, participated as part of a creative, rights-based project run in collaboration between The Alan Turing Institute, Scottish AI Alliance and Children’s Parliament.
Phase one ‘Exploring children’s views on AI’ of the project worked with children from four schools across Scotland to find out their current knowledge of AI and what they think future possibilities and risks are for AI. The children had lots of thoughts on some of the specific ways that AI might affect them as children.
Across all school groups, students were confused about which technology uses AI and which does not. Only 11 children out of 87 surveyed were confident or very confident that they knew what AI is and what it does in their everyday lives.
In particular, the children interviewed wanted to learn about how AI can be fair, or unfair, to children. This ranged from fairness in data collection to the fairness of outcomes decided by an AI system, rather than a human.
They also said they felt concerned about risks associated with AI systems making decisions without enough human involvement.
A Member of the Children’s Parliament (MCP), aged ten from Glasgow said: “It is important for children to know about artificial intelligence because it is the future and it is good to learn new things when they affect our lives.”
Steph Wright, Head of the Scottish AI Alliance, said: “The Scottish AI Alliance is committed to ensuring that the voices of children are heard in the development of Scotland's AI future and the completion of the first phase of this project is a great step in this direction. We look forward to continuing this work with Children's Parliament and The Alan Turing Institute."
Gregory Metcalfe, Project Lead at Children’s Parliament: “It’s been incredibly rewarding introducing children’s voices to the field of AI in Scotland. The children have a lot to say on the topic and we’re really looking forward to making sure their views and opinions are taken up meaningfully as the project progresses.”
To mark the end of this phase of the project, a group of children representing the four classes presented their work at the Scottish AI Summit held in Glasgow at the end of March 2023.
