A study has indicated that AI chatbots often exhibit an “empathy gap,” potentially causing distress or harm to young users. This highlights the pressing need for the development of “child-safe AI.”
The research, by a University of Cambridge academic, Dr Nomisha Kurian, urges developers and policy actors to prioritize approaches to AI design that take greater account of children’s needs. It provides evidence that children are particularly susceptible to treating chatbots as lifelike, quasi-human confidantes and that their interactions with the technology can go awry when it fails to respond to their unique needs and vulnerabilities.
The study links that gap in understanding to recent cases in which interactions with AI led to potentially dangerous situations for young users. They include an incident in 2021, when Amazon’s AI voice assistant, Alexa, instructed a 10-year-old to touch a live electrical plug with a coin. Last year, Snapchat’s My AI gave adult researchers posing as a 13-year-old girl tips on how to lose her virginity to a 31-year-old.
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