New SIG "Children and AI" launches
The founding event for the new FCAI Special Interest Group on “Children and AI” was held on March 14, 2023. The hybrid event had participants from Aalto University, the University of Oulu, Business Tampere as well as on Zoom. Altogether 70 people around Finland so far expressed their interest in the SIG.
We had fascinating expert talks and an interesting panel discussion on designing ethical AI with children. The event was opened by Marianne Kinnula, University of Oulu, who emphasized the need for the SIG to connect and create a consortium of experts and practitioners working on all things related to AI for, with, and by children, from research, design, technology, and policy perspectives. With this SIG, we can gather together as a diverse set of experts and connect and discuss the implications and opportunities for empowering, inclusive, and accessible AI for, with, and by children. Our special interest is not to work only among experts and practitioners but also to innovate on ways to include children in the discussions and decisions concerning them, i.e. using child-centered and child-driven participatory approaches. The SIG plans to host seminars, panels, workshops & other activities, with experts and non-experts including children, parents, teachers, and schools, and the general public. The key sentiment was: let’s do this together!
The opening was followed by four experts talks, with Teemu Leinonen and Uttishta Varanasi, Aalto University, discussing three hypotheses on the Grand Challenges in Global Learning: AI and Peace, based on their extensive experiences on critical AI literacy for children across the world.
Bruna de Castro e Silva, Tampere University, discussed the opportunities and risks of AI for children, emphasized embedding Children’s Rights in AI from the inception of application designs, and the importance of including children and the various stakeholders who play crucial roles in their everyday lives.
Eija-Leena Koponen, Data & ML entrepreneur, advisor for SomeBuddy, and Women in AI Ambassador for Finland continued with her talk about Tackling social media harassment with AI, on preventing the risks of social media and online environments to happen and protecting children when the risks realize.
Sumita Sharma from University of Oulu ended the presentations with her talk on Designing for Autism, where she showcased how ethical questions around AI use can arise from the situation where children themselves - in this case young autistic children - are not the actual users of AI, but data is still collected on them.
Sumita Sharma from INTERACT Research Unit, University of Oulu, talking about autistic children and AI, at Aalto University
In the panel discussion, moderated by Netta Iivari, University of Oulu, there were three experts as panel members: Kirsikka Kaipainen (Tampere University), Markku Turunen (Tampere University) and Eva Durall Gazulla (University of Oulu). The discussion revolved around hopes and fears regarding AI and children, with reflections on what AI literacy might involve. Positions ranged from highlighting the need of technology understanding and explainability to emphasizing the need of a critical dimension. While there was consensus on AI-powered tools’ potential for creating opportunities to tackle societal challenges, there was also a reflection on the limits of AI and the need to avoid naive techno-optimism. Similar to many emergent technologies, AI tools might not be the ultimate solution to societal problems, but would instead entangle in complex scenarios in which new problems arise. Understanding these limitations is important to work towards socio-technological futures in which many worlds and needs are considered.
There was a lot of excitement in the air, and in the open discussions the founding event participants expressed their happiness with the variety of fields and actors around this topic: formal and non-formal education contexts, children of different ages and neurodiversity, researchers and practitioners from technical fields such as engineering, computer science, and human-computer interaction, but also linguistics, law, media and many others.
The Children and AI SIG has an open call for members to join and all are welcome, even if you just want to receive emails! Members will plan the next event, exploring possibilities for collaborations and joint proposals, and sharing regular updates on the SIG’s activities.