Protecting Children In The Age Of AI

Context: An analysis of the risks faced by children in a world increasingly powered by virtual reality and artificial intelligence (AI) and the safeguards to be put in place.

Risks faced by children in a world increasingly powered by virtual reality and Artificial Intelligence (AI):

• Digital divide: According to UNICEF and International Telecommunication Union (ITU), two-thirds of the world’s children do not have access to the Internet at home.
• “Honeypots” for child predators: Video games and chat forums being misused.
• Digital addiction: Children hooked through algorithms and gimmicks like “streaks”, “likes”, infinite scroll, etc.
• Digital manipulation: through fake news, conspiracy theories, hype, hubris, online bullying, hate speech and the likes.
  • The AI is sorting children into tribes and feeding them a steady diet of specially customised tribal cuisine, moulding their perspectives, preferences, beliefs and customs.
• Issues of data privacy and data governance: AI performing facial recognition of children and toddlers, issues aggravated with no effective governance framework to ensure judicious use of data.
  • For E.g. Germany banned Cayla, an Internet-connected doll, because of concerns of being hacked and used to spy on children.
• Widening fissures in education: When pandemic caused usual tests to be cancelled in the United Kingdom, the use of algorithms led to thousands of students losing out on college admissions and scholarships.
  • Thus, it acts as an algorithmic bias inadvertently typecast or brand children, harming their future opportunities.

Way forward:

• Push to extend Internet access to all children: before AI further deepens pre-existing inequalities and creates its own disparities.
• Multi-pronged action plan to mitigate online harms:
  • Legal and technological safeguards like banning anonymous accounts and tools, like trustworthy certification and rating systems.
  • Greater awareness among parents, guardians and children.
  • Enforceable ethical principles of non-discrimination and fairness.
• Acknowledging the children’s right to a digital environment: In February 2021, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child adopted General Comment 25, on implementing the Convention on the Rights of the Child and fulfilling all children’s right to digital environment.
  • Leverage domestic laws and policies: like Right top Education and National Policy for Children (2013) which can be can be extended to children in a digital space.

Conclusion: Just as India proactively helped shape the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and gave the world the principle of Ahimsa, it could also galvanise the international community around, ensuring an ethical AI for Generation AI.