Video presented during the session: focused on accuracy, modularity, and efficiency at the individual level. At HRI, we’re weaving together new ideas and technologies to create a different kind of AI that can navigate human relationships. We’re working with interdisciplinary research teams to develop AI and robotic systems to benefit society as a whole. Our mission is to lead in the new domain of human-centered AI and to establish the AI tools necessary to navigate human relationships for the bee society to flourish.
Shigemi Satoshi: As you saw the video, bees in harmonious society believe that the next big step for AI systems is to evolve from being the tool to becoming the partner. To achieve that, we aim to develop the future and provide long-term support including psychological care. Ambassadors and aging population and COVID-19 have contributed to decline in human relationships in the community. To address this issue, we need a system that coexists with humans 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and reliable social enablers. In other words, the role of the enabler is to help people lead more fulfilling lives. Currently, the Honda products use only a few hours in a day. I want to change it, and I would like to develop new technology research, new technical research, so that the Honda products can co-exit 24 hours a day. I would like to introduce the HAL robot, which I am researching as one of the ways of realizing a harmonious hybrid society. HAL is an encourage mediator. The target is to provide emotional and psychological support through AI technology to the strongest and facilitate group interaction and relationships. Its value is to analyze and understand the social group dynamics for intergenerational and intercultural harmony to support improving the group diversity and to avoid social conflict and division. Reinforcement, learning to understand and create social dynamics that provide a neutral understanding and team building. We want the HAL robot as a partner, a harmonious hybrid, 24 hours a day. To achieve this goal of the transformation to be a partner with corporate AI, we need to do the following activities. To connect with human beings in a natural way. harmonious individual and social needs, and to foster proactive trust between human and society. The first scenario is to promote growth, group communication, interaction in school in different countries. In the partner, we have started to experiment high school in Japan and in Australia. The second focus is on improving the health of the children in hospital in Spain. Especially, I want to bring the smart to the children by enabling the interaction of the HAL robot. Let me briefly explain how HAL is utilized at school in scenario 1. As a social robot, HAL has served as a facilitator to bridge cultural gap between the students from the different countries and provides the information, lifestyle advice, and that’s unique to each country. For example, he highlights the differences in school lunches, school events such as school sports day, and cultural festivals. These activities help the children understanding and respect the diversity. Please show the videos showing this activity.
Video presented during the session: Over the next five years, HRI is focusing on research in AI that is designed to proactively nurture positive relationships and social cohesion. Our first phase is aimed at supporting inclusive practices and an acceptance of diversity through an embodied AI that acts as an encouraging mediator. Children and the adults they become are the future of a diverse and cohesive society. At HRI, we’re working with various partners and stakeholders to design an encouraging mediator that aims to support appropriate pro-social skills and ways of thinking that bridge cultural differences and support equity, diversity and inclusion through an exchange of ideas, discussion and shared experience with their peers in other countries. The encouraging mediator will adopt UNICEF’s policy guidance on AI for children as an interactive cross-cultural shared experience that creates an enabling environment for its participants. Diversity is about what makes groups different from one another. Community is created out of sharedness and not by sameness. Our encouraging mediator, equipped with human understanding, autonomous behaviour generation and creative learning modules, will facilitate and mediate interaction and communication with children from various institutions from all over the world to form a diverse and shared community through a series of activities that encourage self-expression, open discussion and an understanding of each other’s cultures. Thank you.
Shigemi Satoshi: Okay, next I will explain the development of social robotics cross-cultural mediations. Before we developed and deployed the robotic systems cross-cultural mediation, we conducted various steps not just to ensure the meaningful technology and that makes us seen for children, but also towards responsibility technology that safeguards children in the process. I will just mention three of the most important steps. In first step, around three years ago, we collaborated with UNICEF to promote the pilot study on AI for children. My specialty is that we adopted the UNICEF’s policy guidance in designing our robotic systems and the technical technologies that it used. For example, the guidance number four, we built a strict protocol of ensuring the data and the properties are related to the matter when developing the systems. The kind of research we are working on right now is aligned to mine and our ethical question. Hence, we need to work with some kind of framework to addressing the needs along the way. Step number two, we conducted various co-designs with partners, including the educators, to see from the children the kind of the interaction and the content they want to the robot to provide. For example, we provide the children some true means for them to the program, the robot with the behavior and the kind of the language they want to use. And we hand-headed this in the final systems. In this case, we ensure the children’s participants in every technology, every technology we designed. And for the next step, we gather the multi-stakeholder team from the various fields, and accompany the social science, humanity, and education among others. This seems to provide the content of the intelligent design that’s relevant towards the children’s well-being. We then use this input to develop the workflow to the cross-cultural system for the medication in the diverse cultures among the children through the use of the robotic systems. Then I will show the demo video.
Video presented during the session: Thank you. I’m going to eat a donut. I’m going to eat a donut. Kids from Japan, could you tell us why you selected these avidurs? I want to eat donuts, so I choose donuts. I would love to eat a donut. I want to eat a donut. I’m going to eat a donut. The band members’ picture. We play music in our school’s culture festival. I play the trombone. Oh, that’s wonderful. I play the trumpet. And I play the flute. That’s nice. The picture shared says school. Can you tell us more about it? This is me when the last day of elementary school. We did a dance party. Amazing. Your picture is so cool. Thank you. Rodriguez, you have shared a picture of your school. Can you tell us more about that? So, I took that book because I like the earth and I love the natural resources that it has. And I also want to learn more about the earth so I can save me from these natural disasters and try to work out more. Nice. Now, Tricus, thanks for sharing it with all of us. A-L-I-C-E. I saw you shared your favorite outfit. Did you wear that outfit a lot? Uh, yeah. In school, mostly. Yeah. I don’t think I could pull it off. Now, let’s practice the word university. I got you. I got you. What would you like to study in university? Aerospace engineering. Aerospace engineering looks so interesting. Nice path to follow. So, our next activity is learning how to write kanji. Molly! Oh, it’s a smiley face. Oh, that makes a lot of sense. Japanese children, any comments about this kanji? It’s so cute. Let’s learn words in each other’s languages. Can you say for us any sign that you know? Even in your language, it’s fine. University. I think my giant green eyes make me unique. That, and my amazing personality. I love you. I love you, too. I see you. Yeah, because I want to see people happy. I want to see people happy all over the world. And not sadness and all these bad things. I enjoyed meeting you guys. It was really cool. And I enjoyed this experience because it’s cool. That concludes our episode of today. Excited to see you all next time. Bye for now. Sorry. Do it, do it, do it. OK, do it, do it. Do it, do it. We really want to meet you guys in real life. Yeah, it was amazing to meet you. Yeah, it was. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. See you next time. Bye. Bye. Bye. It was nice meeting you. Goodbye. Bye. I hope you have fun and learn something. See you soon. Bye. Bye. Thank you. Thank you.
Shigemi Satoshi: Sorry about that. Thank you for your kind attention. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Vicky Charisi: Thank you, Sigi-Michan, for the presentation. We understand that this is an ongoing project. As far as I know, this is not something that it is in the market. But we see how a company engages with, while they’re developing their product, engages with current policy guidance for children. Or engages, includes children in their design process, etc. Which is something that we appreciate. And, of course, I understand that this is something that will come later. The connection with global citizenship education here in this project and why we invited this work to be presented in this workshop is that we understand these cross-cultural settings and cross-cultural interactions between children as quite important for global citizenship education. Often we work, you know, teachers work in their local environments. And we want to see also, we explore things that are in different settings, in different cultures, different socio-economic statuses, etc. So, thank you very much for this. And I think we have time for one question, probably. If there is any question from the audience. If you could introduce first. No, we need to give you the microphone. Oh, there. And you can keep your headphones if you want. And if you want to introduce yourself first. No.
AUDIENCE: Hello.
Vicky Charisi: Yes.
AUDIENCE: I am from the small island nation of Samoa. I was wondering. I see that you guys are touching a lot of bases in some of the big nations. Is there any interest or any way that small island nations could be involved in this project? Thank you.
Shigemi Satoshi: Thank you very much for your comment. I think it’s better to expand the different countries to bridge the cultural difference. Thank you.
Vicky Charisi: Thank you. I head over to Stephen, I think. Stephen, you can introduce yourself. Thank you. Can you hear me okay?
Steven Vosloo: Okay. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us. I’m Stephen Foslu. I’m a Digital Policy Specialist at UNICEF in the Office of Research and Foresight. Thank you for the opportunity to be here. I will speak a bit later, but now I’m introducing Thanasis Mitrouh who is from the Netherlands. He’s just finished secondary school, high school and is preparing for university studies. He’s interested in studying digital technology and engineering. Thanasis uses AI in his daily activities as a student and is also interested in the ethical aspects. We look forward to hearing more.
Athanasios Mitrou Georgiou: Thank you very much. I really appreciate this invitation to this workshop and I’m glad to explain briefly my thoughts about AI for young people. So as all of us know, AI is changing the world in ways that are impossible to ignore. For young people, AI brings both exciting opportunities but also big challenges. First I’m going to talk about how AI can shape our education choices and career paths by providing access to information, and secondly how social media keeps us connected with teenagers from all over the world. On the bright side, for those of us who have just finished school like me, AI opens up new areas of studies and careers in fields such as data science, machine learning and AI ethics. It provides us tools that make our work faster and more efficient, whether we’re analyzing or solving problems or creating and exploring our own ideas. For example, AI even empowers young entrepreneurs to build their own businesses with fewer resources, making innovation more accessible than ever. But with all this potential comes a possibility. We have to keep learning and adapting. For example, now that I’m preparing for my university studies, I often use ChatGTP to help me code better and give me feedback on my coding, and that would be way more difficult without ChatGTP. However, AI raises important ethical questions like how to prevent bias in our systems, protect privacy and manage its impact on job and society as a whole. It’s up to us to engage thoughtfully with these issues. And that means developing skills AI can’t replace, such as creativity, emotional intelligence and critical thinking. And by staying curious and resilient, we can turn AI into a tool that works for us and not against us. Social media, another huge part of our lives, also shapes the way we see the world, especially how we think about democracy and social issues. Platforms like Instagram, TikTok and X expose us to diverse perspectives. and connect us to movements we’re interested in. They make it easier than ever to advocate for change and be part of important conversations. But they have their downsides too. Algorithms often trap us in eco-chambers, reinforcing what we already believe and making it harder to see other points of view. And on top of that, misinformation spreads fast and the pressure to react quickly can lead to shallow thinking. To make the most of social media, we have to be critical about what we consume and use it responsibly to amplify positive change. This in combination with measures taken by governments and big tech to keep social media safe for all of us. AI and social media could do more to meet the needs of young people. Imagine if AI had features designed specially for us, like learning tools that adapt to our age and interests. Or maybe some safety modes that are able to block harmful content while encouraging creativity and curiosity. These tools could teach us to evaluate information critically, keeping us safe and informed while we explore and grow. Finally, many of us are privileged to learn how to become global citizens. These opportunities should be given to all children and young people, no matter the place they live in. Global citizenship education in combination with AI could be very useful to prepare young people to shape better societies. AI is a powerful tool, and it’s up to us to decide how we use it. With curiosity, creativity, and a commitment to making a difference, we can ensure that AI shapes a brighter future for all of us. Thank you.
Steven Vosloo: Thank you very much, Tanasis. Okay, let me just get the clicker, please. Thank you. Okay, so, hello again. You can hear okay? Perfect. So, at UNICEF, we are obviously very interested in children’s development and children’s rights and how technology impacts those rights, either to develop those rights and support them or undermine them, and how do we protect and empower children. So, this is an area of work that I lead. and a few years ago I led a project called AI and children or AI for children and we developed guidance, which I’ll touch on in a moment, on how AI can be developed in a way that upholds children’s rights, protects and empowers them. So we started, well we engaged young people around the world and this was a workshop in Sao Paulo in Brazil to really talk to them about, like Thanasis was saying, how do you use AI? What do you think about it? And this point came through really strongly that even though children, and by that I mean anyone under 18, actually the biggest children and youth are the biggest online group out of any age group and they use technology probably more than anyone else. The technologies aren’t really designed with them in mind and that needs to change. So we developed, there we go, this guidance on, like I said, on how AI can be more protective and empowering for children and there’s the link and I really encourage you to use it. It’s in English, Spanish, French and Arabic and there’s some resources for parents and caregivers and teachers even. Let me go to the next slide because this, sorry, these are some of the key points that came out in the guidance and you’ll recognize some of these if you are familiar with the AI world. Things like fairness and non-discrimination or children’s data and privacy. These are not new issues in the world of AI but we really wanted to focus on what does it mean for when we talk about a child’s data, which is different to an adult’s data, or how do we provide transparency and explainability and accountability for children different to adults. And of course, as we know, children’s data is different, children’s understanding as they develop, their cognitive development goes on, is different to that of adults and so things like AI explainability, even for adults it’s difficult, for children it has to be more. much simpler, and we need much simpler ways to provide AI interactions and experiences that are at the level of children and their caregivers. So we work closely with eight organizations around the world to pilot the guidance, including the Honda Research Institute and the Joint Research Center, the JRC, at the European Commission, working with Vicky. So what you heard earlier was one of the projects that piloted the guidance, and we learned from that, and we appreciate that collaboration. But we also worked with companies and with governments. And all of it sits on top of children’s rights, which are basically to protection, to provision, and to participation. So we published that in 2021. We’re at the end of 2024. What has changed since then? And I raise this because, for two reasons. One, we need to constantly be aware of a changing technological landscape and the social landscape around that. And secondly, we are thinking of, if we had to write this guidance today, or if we had to release the guidance, what would we do differently? When you do something like this, as you know from ethical AI principles and ethical guidance, you try and make it as future-proof as possible, and in many ways, the principles have not changed. Your data still needs to be protected. You still need your privacy. You still need to be included in the process. But how does that change today, and what are some of the issues that we are thinking about, or should be thinking about? And so I’m going to list a few today. I would love to hear from you what you think UNICEF should focus on. I don’t know what’s going forward, sorry. What you think UNICEF should focus on, or others should focus on. If you had to read a guidance, let’s say it comes out next year, 2025. So, just quickly. What’s happened since 2021? Generative AI, chat GPT. We know about that. Huge investments by governments and companies. The minister yesterday gave a great opening speech about the global divides and those who have AI opportunity and power and those who don’t. Saudi Arabia itself, I was reading, may invest in a $100 billion AI center. AI advances from creating podcasts to your homework help, medical diagnoses to climate modeling. So things are moving quickly and we also see a real focus on governance. The safety summits that have happened in the UK, in Seoul, in Korea, in February in Paris and a focus on responsible AI. So let me quickly also just include some statistics or some findings from a recent research survey rather done in the US at the top. This was with a thousand teenagers, 13 to 17. And this is interesting. I fear I won’t have a job when I’m old enough to work, age 17. So when we consulted children around the world in 2020, none of them spoke about jobs except those in South Africa where I’m from, where there’s higher youth unemployment. Those in the US, those in Sweden, those in Chile did not speak about jobs. Now we said coming up in the US. The one on the right is also interesting. I never know if a picture I’m looking at is AI or not. And so the issue of trust is something that’s changing for all of us as we experience more AI media. Information comes up, 59% of teens are concerned about this and almost half of teens use AI tools several times a week or more. Now this is the US, so this is not the same for all countries. But some of the data that we’re getting is that children even in global South countries, and I’ll talk about that in a moment, are also using, 40% or so, are also using AI systems once a week. And so it’s not just a rich country or developed world phenomenon. That’s what we see. The bottom stat is interesting. It’s from a study done by Fossey last year with teenagers in the US, Germany, and Japan. And they said, what are the top two ways that you would use AI in the future? And half of teenagers in Japan said for emotional support. So this is very interesting. And we’ll have to, you know, depending on what you think, you may have different views on that, but it’s a very interesting stat. This is how some teenagers will look to AI. So I’ll just quickly run through some of the issues that we think this means that where guidance is needed and engagement is needed with young people for how AI could, how we shape AI for children. So the skills has come up again and again. This is not new. We covered this in our policy guidance, but the world is changing in terms of what kind of skills do you need today and in the future? Life skills, skills for work. We don’t know what the workplace in the future looks like. And so how do we better prepare or anticipate what those skills are and therefore change education systems today? How do we teach responsible use of AI? We can’t debate anymore whether children should use AI or not, it is happening. How do we teach responsible use and provide protections and empowerment as needed? And how do we use AI to support education? So the second one, AI generated child sexual abuse material. This is something we did was not on the radar at all in 2020, but it is on the rise and kind of deep fakes of non-consensual intimate images or videos being created and shared. And the numbers are still quite small, but rising quickly. And it really is a problem for, well, for the victims, but it also is a real problem for law enforcement as they try to identify real victims who. now being mixed up with the kind of manipulated images. AI relationships is something that’s interesting and it’s been coming up more and more and I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with AI relationships but we are seeing news stories of AI relationships gone wrong in a sense and there are two cases in the US now where families are suing tech companies who they’re alleging that these AI interactions caused the children either suggested the children do harm or caused children to do harm themselves to themselves and so it’s something to to really watch in terms of of what kind of protections we need environmental impacts of AI this is something again that was not on our radar we when we wrote about this in 2020 it was really just to say that AI has an environmental impact but really AI can help combat climate change but we’re seeing with the growth of data centers that consume a lot of energy to build to maintain the rare minerals that go into AI systems and servers and the e-waste that gets produced this is something we really need to watch in the future and I just raised this because UNICEF’s work on climate change and children really shows that climate change impacts children more than it does adults and so we really need to watch this children also have a right to a clean sustainable environment and then lastly this misinformation point that we again we did not look at this just three years ago it came up in the quote earlier but the use of AI for misinformation or manipulated media that does is meant to mislead or cause distrust is something something we need to watch so I just do two more quickly The AI supply chain, again, this is not something that we will focus on in a big way, but it’s something that keeps coming up, that we need to improve the working conditions. These are digital products, and like all products that children use, we need to look at the supply chain and the labor practices, and there are stories of children potentially being used for data labeling and content moderation in very unsafe and unsupported conditions. So that obviously has to change. Okay. Sorry, let’s start, but basically just to say thank you for this, I would love to hear from you about what you think, how we can create a space where AI is more child-centered. We have some data coming out in the next few months from a project we’re doing called Disrupting Harm, where we’ve asked children in 12 countries, and not the usual US, UK, in Morocco, in Colombia, in Mexico, how they use AI, what they’re worried about. We’re looking forward to sharing that with you. Thank you.
Vicky Charisi: Thank you, Stephen. Amazing. In fact, what you mentioned about the climate change issue, I was last week in a conference where the Ban Ki-moon Foundation, they announced this climate change and global citizenship education. So there are, I think there is quite activity on this topic, and I’m very looking forward to see the next steps. But I think we have time also for one question for Stephen. Yes, please.
AUDIENCE: It’s not about the question, just a comment that, first of all, let me introduce myself. I’m Piu from Myanmar. I just would like to comment that when we are talking about the AI and the education, especially for the children, it is not to focus children from the developing country and vulnerable group as well. So my comment would be like, it’s better to include them and all. also trying to outreach to the school in the developing country and also let them to include in the project what be the moving forward for the inclusion and diversity and also think about the future of the AI in by means of the whole world.
Vicky Charisi: Thank you so much for raising this so clearly, Stephen I don’t know if you want to comment on this at all but totally.
Steven Vosloo: Thank you for that comment it’s really well appreciated and you know that as we, oh no. I can hear Stephen. You can hear? Yeah. You can hear? Okay. No as we know the challenge with AI is that it’s concentrated in a few countries and a few companies and we really need to get those opportunities to the developing world and the global south. In Africa there was an IMF projection that in Africa by 2030 there will be 230 million jobs that will need digital skills which would include AI skills I would think the way that the world is going and so this really is an issue of how do you scale up children in the global south and also use AI and digital to improve education in a really challenging situation. So thank you for that point, that’s really well taken.
Vicky Charisi: Thank you and this also gives me the opportunity to introduce, to give the floor to Dominic who’s going to introduce our next speaker, Dominic the floor is yours and Amisa probably she can turn on her camera as well.
Dominic Regester: Great thank you Vicky, good morning everybody. It’s an enormous pleasure to introduce Amisa, Amisa is a counselling psychologist, a mediator and an advocate for community resilience. for Mental Health and for Peaceful Social Cohesion. She’s the founder and executive director of the youth and women-led organization, Navisha Foundation, which is dedicated to fostering community resilience through community-based mental health interventions, innovations, and approaches. We at Salzburg Global, we had the chance to work with Amisa last year on a project about civic and civil education, which was one of the papers that fed into the design of this session. And so I’m very excited to welcome Amisa to the stage and to hear what she’s gonna say. And after Amisa’s finished, there should be time for Q and A with both people in the room and the online audience. But Amisa, it’s lovely to see you again. Thank you very much for doing this. And over to you.
Vicky Charisi: Yeah, just to mention that Amisa is based in Kenya, right? So Amisa, the floor is yours.
Amisa Rashid Ahmed: Okay. Thank you, everyone. I hope you can hear me.
Vicky Charisi: Yes, very clearly.
Amisa Rashid Ahmed: Okay. Yeah, so my name is Amisa, and I’ll start with a story on how I got into more involvement around AI. So I served in an organization as a board member, and this organization was handling a certain case of a big organization. I don’t want to say the name. This organization was being sued in Kenya because it is an international corporate organization was being sued in Kenya. The content moderators actually felt… Apologies for that. So the content moderators were suing this company because of exploitation. So what happened is they worked with this company, but there was no safeguarding protocols. There was no policies. to safeguard these young people who are workers. And there are content moderators, content annotators, and some of them are working into building content for some AI tools. So it was easy for them to be laid off. And some of them had developed mental health conditions because as content moderators, they were actually very brutal images as they were working. This company, these young people who are suing this big company, losing battle at that moment because it is a, has been like, and these are just young Africans who have, so the exploitation was there. So my work involved, it was to support their mental health, but guiding them on how we can come up with better policies in regards to AI and the emerging trends which nobody is looking into. And so that is really what got me interested into AI. And especially with children, because once we, as the case is still continuing with these young people, and it is also disadvantageous because a lot of government are not supporting the young people. Of course, money has been poured, but these are some of the challenges in the continent, right? So when we’re talking about also AI within the African continent, one thing that is an inequality. A good example at Nivisha Foundation, the organization that we are working in, we’ve been using generative AIs and chatbots to create a therapy so that they can be able to access mental health resources and access therapy support or just an online. chatbot where they can have the conversation with a virtual therapist. So it has been good, but one of the challenges that we are working on is that reflect biases in their training of data and it actually excludes African languages or context or perspective because if you generate like an image of a young professional working in multinational corporate work, it won’t bring the image of somebody like me. So it will bring the image of somebody else, right? So that means that the people who have been able to algorithm and train the data have not actually considered that there are actually other demographies who uses AI and should be included. And from the last speaker’s point on how AI does not involve children, apart from not involving children, it does not involve individuals from marginalized communities, individuals from underrepresented communities because if I’m not represented, how will my context and languages be known? And also, how do we make sure that it reaches everybody, even in place accessibility of all of these things? So that is one aspect where when you’re talking about AI, we are facing, but now look at it from the lens of children. If there are no policies to support these young people who are seeing this big multinational corporate in regards to their mental health and in regards to protocols and policies, so who safeguards the children just the AI in whichever capacity it is? is and then who also looks into the safeguarding policies that are in existence and make sure that there’s a mental health clause that take cares of these from both the people who are generating AI and both the consumers so that you know that these are the repercussions and this is how you as a multinational tech company coming up with AI in case this happened, this is the repercussions in regards to people health and safeguarding and their wellbeing. The other issue is data privacy and security. So if there’s no data privacy, the safeguarding policies does not take care of data’s policies and security, how do we make sure that AI tools used in education because now AI is the in thing and we are happy that everybody’s using it, how do we make sure that it is actually used and not exploited for data for profit? Data and as we know, we may not be able to get the data that is coming up from AI. So apart from this is how AI and how we are viewing it in the continent but what about, what are the opportunities for citizenship education in Africa? So number one, localize AI and create educational resources in African languages and contexts, even if it is only have 48 ethnic languages, if you go to other neighboring countries, there are 100, 200 ethnical languages. So we may not be able, but there’s the social norm that people can be able to relate to. So when I’m using generative AI, how can it give me information and resources that is catered to my surrounding and not give… me a Euro-American example that I am not able to relate with. That will actually promote inclusivity. The other aspect of AI and opportunities around it is equitable access to quality education. AI-driven tools can address, they can, like AI addresses, like we at Inivisha, we are using AI. We know other colleagues who are using different aspect of AI’s, amazing innovations just to make sure that we are creating equitable access to education and other opportunities. One thing that I am appreciative of, let’s say, generative AI is how, and this as able-bodied people, we are not able to see, but people with disability actually use AI a lot to ease in their work. Whether it is mental, where people who have ADHD and they have issues in starting task, AI is the best tool to be able to use it. Whether it is speech-to-speech, like it’s a person who is blind or have visual issues and they’re not able to actually use tech while seeing them, there is voice-to-voice or speech-to-speech that they can be able to use. As much as we may be able to say, okay, it is not working, but for people with disabilities that we’ve worked with, they can be able to attest that AI has really worked and has really helped their work in whatever capacity that they’re doing. Also, AI can be used to encourage global perspective and exposing children in fostering global citizenship skills, understanding different contexts. In that, as much as we are saying that AI should be contextualized, we are not saying that we should not also get the aspect of learning more about other people, cultures, and information, which can actually bring easy, encourage global perspective and all those kind of. things. And to just finalise my point in regards to ethical AI in governance, we really need child-centred design around AI. So AI tools must prioritise, and that is my call to action, prioritise children’s developmental needs, particularly within the continents, with varied social dynamic skills. And that goes back to research. How much is actually invested in research around AI within the continent? And when I’m talking within the continent, Africa is not homogenic. Like Kenya has its own cultural issues, socio-economic, political issues. Tanzania, the same. If you go to the southern Africa, to the western Africa, to what? So how can we invest in the continent, in terms of saying investing in Africa, but really being intentional about going locally and doing researches around AI so that we can have these child centres designed and come up with needs or children’s needs, which despite the various social, cultural dynamics. So that is a call for action for most of us, because we know the statistic, like Africa has the largest population of youth and young children. So if we are not actually working with them to make sure that you’re making the future better for them, we cannot say that we’re actually creating a better society for them. How can we have transparency and accountability also when it comes to governance and having clear guidelines on how AI tools function and their impact on children learning? We need transparency. There’s not a lot of transparency because it is for profit and a lot of people profit from the data around AI. And how can our government, this is also a call for us, and monitor AI’s role in education? You cannot say that AI is there, so us. as governments not addressing AI and not prioritizing it, means that we are leaving children and young people exploited and exposed to harm around AI. And how can we make sure finally that we have like policy, whether it is PPP, whether it’s regulatory framework, whether it’s funding and investment around AI in research, funding, local challenges, coming up with the frameworks like data protection actions. In Kenya, we have one, an act for 2019, but how do we keep on also iterating and making it better? Because every day when you’re talking about AI, it’s changing. So how can you make sure that the data protections acts are actually going with time? And finally, I personally work with my personal, if you go even to my LinkedIn platform, you’ll see that I’m really working around decolonization and Africanization of most of these things around mental health and mental health. And AI is one of the intersectionalities that we keep on talking about. And one of the things that I’m key on is how do we center narratives? How do we center African narratives in AI development? Be it pushing for languages, indigenous knowledge within the AI system, so that we can be able to have access to this. And how do we make sure marginalized children from marginalized communities, I come from one, ensure that they have access. Currently, we work with the refugees from Sudan and AI has been, generative AI has been amazing as a tool of engaging with them. But how do we make sure that we highlight and make it work for them when it comes to AI? And finally, how do we include mental health and integrate it in whatever AI education, whether it is children, emotional and psychological well-being. and having AI chatbots offering mental health supports to students, so how can we be able to do that? So that being said, I am happy to have any questions around it, but my call to action remains the same. How do we also decolonize AI? Because if we were, let’s say, the languages that are used and all these things are not from us, that means that our culture from the Indigenous marginalized communities will never be seen. So how do we make sure that as you are building AI, it is inclusive to the core and not just saying we are inclusive, but intentional inclusivity that can be seen? So thank you and back to you, Dominic or Vicky.
Dominic Regester: Thank you, Amisa, that was fantastic. We have time for a couple of questions, I think, so either questions from the online audience, feel free to add them in the chat or if you’re in the room with Vicky.
Vicky Charisi: Yeah, if there is any question from the audience for Amisa or comment. Yeah, Stephen.
Steven Vosloo: So that was really, really interesting. I’m curious about, just very briefly, what you do with the refugees from Sudan and how they use AI, please. Thank you.
Amisa Rashid Ahmed: Okay, so what we do at Nivishe, we run a fellowship, a Nivishe Mental Health Fellowship, whereby we localize, contextualize and use cultural sensitivity to educate young people around mental health. It’s in fourth cohort and from our third cohort, we had Sudanese youth who said that they want to be involved because a lot of humanitarian support is going to Sudan, but nobody’s talking about their mental well-being, the trauma that comes from the war that is inflicted. So that is how we are able to come up with our fellowship specifically. But since most of them are displaced in different countries, we have been able to use, the fellowship already had its own curriculum that was geared towards like Kenyan youth specifically, but now because of AI we’ve been able to use it to translate the conversations, the curriculum so that it can suit the Sudanese languages. Of course, we have Sudanese youth advisory board to guide us in regards to that. But also, we have like a chat bot that we are training it to actually speak or understand the Sudanese language and context, so that whichever place a young person is and they’re not able to access mental health support or a therapist, they can be able to use the chat bot that actually is cultural sensitive and uses the language to be able to do that. So we are working in the aspect of voice-to-voice and speech-to-speech and also like feeding it with the Sudanese language so that they can be able, Sudanese Arabic, so that they can be able to access it while they’re doing the fellowship, learning more about mental health. There’s also a resource or a tool, because since you are not able to offer one-on-one mental health support, as most of them are displaced widely within a majority within the continent, how can they use the existing tool to make sure that they’re accessing the necessary mental health support that they need?
Vicky Charisi: Thank you. Thank you, Amisa. Yeah, it was great to have you with us today, Amisa. And although I apologise to the audience, the connection sometimes was not very good, but I didn’t want to interrupt her because I think all of us understood and it was a great contribution. Thank you very much, Amisa. We are going to move on to our last session. This is an informal conversation that I had with another student. So for this workshop, we thought, you know, inclusivity, not only in terms of geographical or cultural inclusivity, but also inclusivity of youth. It’s really important. So that’s why we had with us Thanassis and also we have one more girl. She was not able to be with us either online because she has school obligations. So we videotaped the conversation and we are going to see to watch now the conversation on the video recording. So can we have the video on the screen and then we will have some like 10 minutes for a discussion among us and to hear also about your work. Yeah. Yeah, you can play. Hi, thank you for being with us today. As we have discussed this workshop aims to give us an overview of the role of AI on young people’s global citizenship education. And we would like to hear your opinion about it based on your experiences. In most countries, teenagers grow up in societies that depend more and more on AI based applications. Can you describe what kind of opportunities and risks you see about the use of AI by young people and tell us your opinion about possible future directions.
Ariadni Gklotsou: Hi Vicky, thank you for the invitation to be part of this workshop at the IGF 2024. I’m glad to share some of my thoughts about AI and global citizenship education. First, my experience as a student first in Singapore, then Australia and now in Greece has shown me how important it is for young people to understand each other when they grow up in different places. I believe that a global citizen is a person that takes action to make their local communities and global societies a better place for all. For example, people decide about solar panels to support our environment and create alliances for treaties for peaceful collaborations. More recently, developers create AI technologies that can help teenagers connect with other teachers all over the world. AI has and is increasingly becoming a component in our everyday activities, even if we don’t realize it. It ranges from the creation of Instagram feed you may scroll on and extends to tools that help you do your project at school. We are all aware of the life-saving tool tragedy is when you realize your literature essay is due the next morning. AI benefits us by creating specialized and specific recommendations such as music or movies and it acts as a more direct research engine. Moreover, the use of AI in social media acts as a tool for young people to stay connected while enriching their understanding for different cultures all around the world. However, AI comes with several ethical challenges. when employed to carry out tasks that help us learn and are critical for us when we are developing other skills. An example of this is when Chatterbt is used as an as a generator rather than a feedback studio. When we give authority for it to change our words or structure our sentences, this is where AI becomes more complex. Sometimes it makes us even believe that the ideas generated by Chatterbt are our own, but it is important for all students to understand that in different contexts the same tool might have positive or negative impact for us.
Vicky Charisi: Indeed, that’s so true. Thanks for sharing with your thoughts about the current situation. Now can you tell us if you have any suggestions for future directions?
Ariadni Gklotsou: I think that we all need to be safe in an online environment as it happens in our physical environment. For this we need rules. I would like to talk about the International Baccalaureate Organization or the IPO which I am part of. This international high school diploma program, the IB has issued an academic integrity policy document that includes the use of AI. I agree with it since they have made it more clear that plagiarism is a serious action that could result in the student to be expelled from the IB or in worst cases an institution to lose their license to teach the IB. The document summarizes that AI cannot be used as a writing tool but only used to help us improve text with grammatical errors. This way the IB creates these boundaries on the use of AI without restricting it completely. For these reasons I believe it is important to set certain rules even legislations to control the use of AI but not to the extent that prevents it completely. I’m very curious for example how the new decision on the Australian government to ban social media for children under 16 will be applied. AI is the development of modern society that can now be ignored and we hope that this workshop at IGF will help make decisions for AI and its use.
Vicky Charisi: Thank you so much Ariadne, that is very helpful for all of us. We are very glad to hear your thoughts about the use of AI by young people and we hope that more young people like you will advise us on how to create a better online environment for all of you. Thank you very much. Right. So, we saw on this like some worries, especially, I mean, we all, Ariadne mentioned the life-saving Chachupiti, right? So, we see the attitudes that children have. Probably, we can stop the video again. I think we hear again the video. This is what I hear in my… Is it only me? No. Okay. Yeah. But I would like now to open the floor, probably, to the audience. If you have any comments or if you want to share something from your work that it is relevant to this workshop, we would love to hear. Yeah. Sure. We need the microphone. Thank you. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay. If you can put the microphone closer. Yeah.
AUDIENCE: Okay. So, Amisa has answered one of my questions, but I will add. So, in more effective ways, I’m from Sudan. So, how children often like lack access to safe infrastructure, education. So, how can AI policies and tools can be adapted to address the unique needs of children in these areas, ensuring they are not left behind? And how can we ensure that they are benefited from the AI-driven global citizenship education? Do you want the… Yeah.
Steven Vosloo: Thank you. That’s a great question. What we see overall is that, what I said in the beginning, just to say it again, because it keeps coming up, is that children use AI, but they’re not involved in how AI is designed or how the policies are made. So, it was really great to hear very honest reflections from Ariadne on how AI is used, but also how… guidance is useful about banning it, but what are some of those boundaries? So the simple answer to the question is policymakers and AI companies should involve children more in the process, because if children’s voices are heard then the AI systems will talk to their unique needs, their developmental stages, their different contexts. You know, as was said earlier, the child in Kenya, in Nairobi or in the rural areas has a very different perspective to, let’s say, the child in Tokyo or in Sydney. So these are all valid points, but at the moment often there’s a one-size-fits-all for AI. So we need to all work harder and really push this point of including children in the process. So hopefully we can count on the young people among us to help us on this journey. Thank you.
Vicky Charisi: We have one more question. You have a microphone?
AUDIENCE: A question, actually, not a comment. Yeah. I’m originally from Myanmar. We are also facing a crisis at this stage, and even there are lots of the young people and children suffering a lot, so because of the civil wars and the political turmoil, and also at the refugee camp, there are lots of things are happening there. The challenge is that we cannot communicate in person directly to those who are inside the refugee camp, because there are also the restrictions to communicate with the outsiders. But so when Anissa talked about the mental health fellowship, there is something that we are trying to do right now for the young people to build their mental resilience. The purpose of that program is supposed to be like a community-driven program because we cannot go in person and train them to be aware of their mental resilience and how to be temporary. That is the thing that we can provide in this stage. We cannot say how to build their mental well-being during the crisis area so the thing that we are trying to do is like we are trying to engage with them virtually through the program and also trying to provide the temporary relief practice that they can use in their daily life for their emotional well-being and then coping their anxiety in some what way. But on one hand, our concern is that the sustainability of the program because it is totally voluntary based program. So the thing is that we have to look for someone from the relevant community to get involved in that program to contribute back to their community. I believe that in this Internet Governance Community, most of the community members are also voluntary based. We are modeling that concept and trying to practice in the localization program. That is what I commenced talking about the mental resilience and the young people and we also need to consider about the sustainability of the program without having any grants or any funding. At least we can figure it out the passionate young person who would like to contribute back to their community.
Vicky Charisi: Yeah, that’s an excellent point. Thank you so much for raising it. I know we have just a few minutes to rest. Just for my part, I think what you said, like having funding, but also Stephen mentioned beforehand we need more investments and this kind of programs should be sustainable and should be long-term, especially if you engage with mental health issues. This is something that it cannot be like for three months, for example, you need to have a long-term plan. And I hope, especially in this community, from our side, of course, we are going to report back on IGF and eventually to the UN, and we, I mean, with the means that we have, we are going to raise this issue, of course, but thank you very much for commenting on this. I don’t know if there are other comments on this topic. No. Okay, Dominique online, do you see any, do we have any questions from online participants or we are good to close? Dominique, we can’t hear you, probably you’re muted.
Dominic Regester: Not muted at this end.
Vicky Charisi: One moment.
Dominic Regester: There are no questions.
Vicky Charisi: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. We don’t have questions. Okay. So, I would like to thank you all for being here today with us. And if you want to keep in contact, you have our names, contact emails, please keep in touch. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. you you you you
