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Tech innovators have been warning for some time now about the downsides of artificial intelligence (AI), from the creation of deepfake videos to the loss of jobs to total human extinction.
But missing from most of these discussions is how AI directly affects children — even though the technology is already here, in kids’ playrooms and bedrooms.
Manufacturers already offer a wide selection of AI-enabled products for children, with the next generation of AI devices “likely to become electronic babysitters” — “AI nannies” or “nanny bots” — and used like television and video games to lighten caregiving duties.
The technology’s interface with kids raises important concerns about its effect on their emotional and neurological development and their privacy.
Dr. Michelle Perro, co-author of “What’s Making our Children Sick?” who spent 40 years in pediatric practice, told The Defender:
“Communication between parent and child is more than just a neural interplay. Immeasurable elements exist in addition to verbal communication — such as facial expressions, tonal variations and the oft-disregarded energetic exchanges that go on between humans that are impossible to capture by AI.
“Children learn with six senses, and the emotional intelligence imparted via communication is a key part of this learning. Not to mention, there are cultural variations that are imparted in language and communication development that would be lost with AI nannies.”
AI ‘playmates’ promise ‘genuine friendship’
Similar to innovations of previous generations, AI-powered products aim to engage children, hone certain skill sets and make life easier for parents.
For example, the Moxie Robot is billed as the “most advanced AI robot for kids ages five-plus.” It’s intended to help children with skills like processing and expressing emotion.
Is your child depressed? Have the anti-depressants you’ve been sneaking in their food begun to lose effect? Are you too busy with yourself to give proper attention to your own family?
No problems! For $800 you can purchase Moxie – Moxie is an AI robot that will keep your child… pic.twitter.com/cGV8c2nD5g
— 🇺🇲LiquidsGear🇺🇲 (@LiquidBinaryTTV) August 14, 2023
Miko — another AI playmate — promises “genuine friendship” for kids by recognizing and calling them by name and responding to their mood.
“Need a joke when you’re down? A dance when you’re bored? Miko’s on it,” the product website states. “Because it’s not just the smartest little robot you’ll ever meet. It’s also your friend.”
Games, puzzles, shows…yoga!? Miko has it all. Designed by an advanced robots lab alongside experts in child development and education, Miko (My Companion) is the ideal AI robot friend for kids.#Miko #Miko3 #Yoga #DanceParty #KidsRobot #RobotForkids #kidsactivities pic.twitter.com/v3XHPG505p
— Miko Robot (@MikoRobot) October 9, 2022
Children today routinely interact with AI through home devices like smartphones (“Hey Siri”) and home automation devices (“Hey Google”) to turn on and off lights and music playlists, and to get answers to a broad array of questions.
Sandra Chang-Kredl, Ph.D., associate professor of the Department of Education at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada, told The Globe and Mail:
“Do we want children to think that toys or objects are just as good as actual pets or actual friends or actual humans? That concerns me. … How is it going to be when children are purposely encouraged to confuse what’s an object and what’s a living thing?”
AI is not confined to robots and devices.
For example, the social media platform Snapchat launched ChatGPT-powered “My AI” in February, designed to be an “experimental and friendly chatbot” and a “personal sidekick.”
While Snapchat’s terms of service require users to be at least 13 years old, there is no age verification, making it easy for younger children to sign up and use the service.
These more disembodied AI tools, while not physical like robot nannies, if not carefully monitored by parents and regulated by governments could take the place of real social connections and undermine the skills children need to negotiate relationships in a complex world, child development experts told The Defender.
Cuddling, playing, face-to-face interactions ‘cannot be outsourced’
It’s too early to know how AI will affect child development, but experts can make some educated guesses.
Dr. Liz Mumper, president and CEO of The Rimland Center for Integrative Medicine, said the thought of AI nannies “provokes an innate fear response” within her.
Mumper told The Defender:
“We have just seen the devastating effects on child development during COVID countermeasures. Innovations that keep people further apart, denigrate the role of humans in child rearing and elevate technology as partial parental surrogates make me worry about upcoming generations.
“Parents, be careful as this technology is advertised. There are some aspects of parenting infants and toddlers — cuddling, playing and face-to-face interactions — that cannot be outsourced.”
There is much still to learn about foundational brain development, according to a recent Wall Street Journal article by Dr. Dana Suskind, founder and co-director of the TMW Center for Early Learning + Public Health and founding director of the Pediatric Cochlear Implant Program at the University of Chicago.
She wrote in “The AI Nanny in Your Baby’s Future”:
“What babies need most to optimize this early period of rapid advance is rich conversation, what developmental psychologists call ‘serve and return’ interactions. This comes naturally to parents interacting with their children and is known to fuel children’s growth in cognitive and emotional skills. …
“Introducing young brains to responsive AI may alter them in fundamental ways we can’t anticipate. If we provide the wrong sort of input or interaction, we may distort cognitive development in far-reaching ways.”
Educator Jonathan Sim is concerned about AI’s and social media’s influence on children’s social development and ability to collaborate. In a column for Channel News Asia, Sim wrote:
“I have observed students struggling with group projects, as they could not understand how anyone could work so differently from them — a false perception reinforced by their experiences of social media, where they have been interacting with similar people within their bubble. …
“Seeing how these personalized bubbles are making our youths struggle to understand and work with others, my worry is that this problem will worsen with children raised by AI.
“If we are not careful, we risk raising a generation of children with severely skewed perceptions of the world due to the personalized bubble AI creates around them.”
Privacy concerns of child-centric AI tech
One AI product, Storytimes, uses a program that writes children into a story and generates accompanying illustrations based on photos the user uploads. Storytimes’ website states, “With artificial intelligence, we’re able to recreate lifelike illustrations of your child in various settings and adventures.”
While the product’s website offers information about creative features, it does not address how children’s images will be used or if safeguards will be included to protect children’s images.
Baby-monitor companies offer AI technology that records infants’ faces, sounds and movements around the clock. According to The Washington Post, critics worry the devices come with profound privacy trade-offs and open homes to cyberattacks.
Attorney Greg Glaser told The Defender, “It amazes me that legislators and regulators do not see two steps ahead here to proactively protect children from AI.”
Similar privacy concerns apply to any of the games, videos and social media platforms that children interact with.
The Federal Trade Commission is considering a proposal to allow businesses to use AI-powered facial biometric scanning “age-estimation technology” to obtain parental permission for children under 13 to use online gaming services. But the privacy guarantees proposed by industry are not convincing critics.
‘Vague and unenforceable’ promises
In June, European Union lawmakers signed draft legislation for the use of AI, including a ban on using the technology in biometric surveillance and certain clauses to protect children.
This is the first law on AI by a major regulator and could act as a model for other jurisdictions planning similar regulations.
UNICEF’s draft policy guidance promotes children’s rights and raises awareness of how AI systems can uphold or undermine these rights. The guidance was developed after an extensive consultation process with experts around the world and almost 250 children in five countries.
Steven Vosloo, a UNICEF data, research and policy specialist, said:
“The AI could be using natural language processing to understand words and instructions, and so it’s collecting a lot of data from that child, including intimate conversations, and that data is being stored in the cloud, often on commercial servers. So, there are privacy concerns. …
“Around a third of all online users are children. We often find that younger children are using social media platforms or video sharing platforms that weren’t designed with them in mind.
“They are often designed for maximum engagement, and are built on a certain level of profiling based on data sets that may not represent children.”
According to Nature, “The United States has no broad, federal AI-related laws — nor significant data-protection rules.” Congressional hearings and presidential meetings related to AI regulation have yielded “vague and unenforceable” promises, Nature reported.
AI-related laws are going into effect in six states this year. Most of them are part of comprehensive consumer privacy laws, regulating AI and automated decision-making by allowing users to opt out of profiling and requiring impact assessments.
The two bills in Minnesota proposing to prohibit social media algorithms that target children failed. Two were considered in California last year: AB 2273, “The California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act” passed and was signed into law, and AB 2408, “The Social Media Platform Duty to Children Act,” was “quietly killed” by the California Senate.
This legislative session, 12 states passed AI laws. Connecticut’s RB 1103 is the only one that addresses child protections — and even then, it only briefly mentions privacy issues, not the potential neurological and social consequences of exposing children to AI.
Several states proposed bills to increase transparency and understanding of AI’s effects. Only two bills focus on children: California’s AB 1282 and New Mexico’s HM 75/SM 63 would establish commissions to report on the mental health risks associated with children’s use of social media and AI.
