[csaa-forum] Children and Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) in Australia: The Big Challenges (Report)

[Tama Leaver]

Dear CSAA Colleagues,

We're pleased to share the release of our ARC Centre of Excellence for the
Digital Child report "Children and Generative Artificial Intelligence
(GenAI) in Australia: The Big Challenges", led by Suzanne Srdarov and
myself.

The world of AI is complicated and continually changing, with particular
issues that impact on children and young people more than others. Our
report highlights issues we believe AI companies, policy makers, educators
and anyone responsible for thinking about AI and kids, should consider.

In summary the 9 big challenges in terms of children and generative AI
tools that we highlight are:
✨ Agentic Language - real-time interactions, especially via voice, make
GenAI tools sounds like they are agents, aware of what they're saying (ie
intelligent). They aren't.
✨ Bias - Indiscriminately harvesting data from many sources includes the
biases inherent in these sources. Bias in often means bias back out again.
✨ Copyright and Ownership - while there are lots of legal questions about
the training data, it's clear a lot of content was taken without permission
or payment, which remains a big issue.
✨ Environmental Cost - the cost of a GenAI answer is significantly higher
than other answers, including search. That adds up to a lot more power,
water and other resources for these tools. In a world struggling with
climate change, GenAI is making that struggle worse, not better.
✨ Indigenous Data Sovereignty - at present, Indigenous data is harvested
indiscriminately, perpetuating the worst extractivist harms, and not giving
Indigenous people a real say in how these tools are deployed.
✨ Interactive AI Agents & AI Companions - the design of GenAI tools makes
them feel like actual people. Emotional ties and bonds can be built,
especially by younger users. That can be dangerous.
✨ Privacy - these tools are all hungry for personal data in a range of
ways, many of which are not made transparent to users.
✨ Ubiquitous AI - increasingly the question isn't where to find AI tools,
but wide integration means it's hard to find online spaces where AI tools
aren't now baked in.
✨ AI Literacies or Critical AI Literacies? - there's a vital difference
between equipping young people to be AI tool users compared to having the
literacy to evaluate the full costs and appropriateness (or not) of using
these tools in the first place.

The full report can be read and downloaded here:
https://issuu.com/digitalchild/docs/children_and_generative_artificial_intelligence_g

More of the Centre's work on children and GenAI can be found here:
https://digitalchild.org.au/artificialintelligence/ #artificialintelligence
#GenAI #childrensrights

Cheers,
Tama

-- 
Professor Tama Leaver (he/him)
Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) http://aoir.org
Professor of Internet Studies

School of Media, Creative Arts and Social Inquiry (MCASI)
Faculty of Humanities
Curtin University
GPO Box U1987 Perth WA Australia 6845
Ph: (+61 8) 9266 1258
Email: t.leaver at curtin.edu.au
Web: www.tamaleaver.net
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