With the terms of reference and the three Royal Commissioners to be announced in the coming weeks, the child rights organisation says now is the time to ensure the inquiry examines the risks and opportunities of AI from the perspective of those whose lives will be most shaped by it.
Save the Children Australia is urging the South Australian Government to:
- Appoint a young person as one of the three Royal Commissioners – someone who has grown up in the digital world and will live with these decisions longest;
- Establish a dedicated stream of inquiry examining AI’s impact on children and young people; and
- Create safe, well-supported ways for children and young people to give evidence directly.
Save the Children Australia Director of Strategic Communications and Engagement, Aram Hosie, said the announcement was a welcome step.
“Australia needs to have a serious and evidence-led public conversation about what AI is doing to our society,” he said.
“And what we know is that the people who will be most affected by which path we take are children – those alive today, and future generations.”
The Royal Commission is expected to take evidence from business, industry, unions, technology developers, academics and the creative industries, but children are currently missing from that list.
“AI is already part of childhood in this country. It’s in classrooms and homework, in toys, in the apps kids use to talk to their friends, in the systems that decide what they see next. Children haven’t designed any of it and nobody is asking them what they want from it, even though they are the ones with the most at stake,” Mr Hosie said.
“Our experience globally is that when you ask children about AI, they have a lot to say. They talk about fake information, about their data, about AI replacing real friendships. They’re not asking adults to take AI away from them, but they are asking for it to be built and governed with them in mind.”
Save the Children was part of a group of organisations that surveyed more than 1,100 children across 49 countries on their views about how AI should be governed. Mr Hosie said the cost of leaving children out is well understood.
“We’ve spent decades trying to retrofit child safety measures into social media but it’s been well and truly after the horse had bolted. Designing for kids from the start is cheaper, easier and far more effective than trying to fix problems later,” he said.
“South Australia has a chance here to show the rest of the country, and frankly the rest of the world, what it looks like to make policy about a powerful new technology with children in the room rather than as an afterthought.”
Save the Children Australia intends to engage directly with the Royal Commission and would welcome the opportunity to work with South Australian Government and other organisations to support children and young people to participate safely and meaningfully.
