Learn more about Safe AI for Children and Young People at our October 3 session

Our next NLP-CoP Ethics & Governance Working Group meeting is on October 3rd at 10-11.30am ET/ 3-4.30pm BST – and will focus on first hand experiences and recommendations for making AI safe for children and young people. Register here!

Opportunities and risks of AI for children

Since 2015, Instant Messaging based APIs have made it possible for the social sector to use avatar-led chatbots to reach young people and children where they are – on chat apps and other social media – representing a massive opportunity in terms of accessibility and approachability, but throwing up new challenges related to ethics and safeguarding which have been exacerbated with the launch of LLMs and Generative AI:

 Some of the key concerns top of mind for practitioners working with and for children and young people are:

• How can we ensure that children’s data is being used appropriately when models and tech companies are so opaque? 
• Does using AI tools affect children’s development? 
• How can we ensure that AI services reply appropriately to safeguarding disclosures? 

During this session, we’ll be digging into best practice that takes into account the above concerns.

Expert speakers

To frame our conversation, we’ll be hearing from practitioners and researchers alike:

• Dr Nomisha Kurian, researcher and author of ‘No, Alexa, no!’: designing child-safe AI and protecting children from the risks of the ‘empathy gap’ in large language models who will be sharing an overview of risks and best practice recommendations when designing AI for children.
• Boglárka Jánoskúti and Dóra Kiss from Terre des Hommes,  who will talk us through the creation of a child-centric AI powered chatbot to improve access to legal information and practical assistance to children in the justice system.

We hope that this event will provide you with a strong set of principles to apply to your own decision-making when exploring using AI to reach children and young people safely and ethically (even / especially if the decision is not to).

Register now

To join us on October 3rd at 10-11.30am ET/ 3-4.30pm BST,  register here – this event is open to anyone.

If you haven’t already, find out more about joining the NLP Community of Practice convened by the MERL Tech Initiative to be sure not to miss future events. As well as gaining access to resources and events at the intersection of MERL and AI in development and humanitarian work, you can join a wide range of working groups covering everything from NLP in Africa to Social and Behavior Change.