Ceibal Foundation was invited to develop a policy guidance on AI for children

The Ceibal Foundation was invited by UNICEF to present its vision on the impact of artificial intelligence on children, during a workshop held in São Paulo, March 9-10th, with the assistance of digital education experts from Latin America and the Caribbean. The activity, which is supported by the Government of Finland, is part of a series of similar events being held in different regions of the world to develop policy guidelines on Artificial Intelligence (AI) for children and young people.

During the presentation of the Ceibal Foundation at the workshop – entitled Artificial Intelligence & Children in Latin America and the Caribbean – its Director, María Florencia Ripani, highlighted that artificial intelligence should not be seen as a problem of the future, since a large part of the cultural consumption of children in Latin America and the Caribbean already takes place in digital platforms based on AI. “One of the problems is that their rights are not always respected. When they watch videos, for example, there are a series of decisions and options that influence the navigation of children and, therefore, guide the consumption of certain types of content, to the detriment of others, without this being transparent through means that are accessible to children”, she pointed out.

Ripani said it is important to integrate these issues into the digital literacy proposals of the countries in the region to ensure that children develop a critical understanding of how artificial intelligence systems work, as they will be increasingly more present as mediators of social interaction. She also stressed the importance of working with multiple stakeholders to make systems more transparent – that is, to understand how they work and why they make certain decisions – and to prevent the production of biased or prejudiced information or results.

UNICEF’s principles on Artificial Intelligence were presented by Virginia Dignum, from Umeå University in Sweden and a member of the European Commission High-Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence, who noted that AI systems must be developed to respect and promote the rights of children and teenagers, and to ensure that they can have control over their own information: “We need to think about more inclusive AI, putting young people at the centre of the development of these projects.

Most national AI strategies and major ethical guidelines only mention children in a superficial way, but as children increasingly use or are affected by artificial intelligence systems in everyday situations – from playing with robotic toys that listen, observe and speak, to interacting with voice assistants – there is a strong need to pay attention to the opportunities and risks they represent.

In this context, UNICEF is organizing a set of workshops around the world to gather regional perspectives and generate policy guidance to be presented on 16-17 June in Helsinki, Finland at the Global Forum on AI for Children. For more information on UNICEF’s project on AI at the international level, please visit the website here or watch the video below: