Children using artificial intelligence tools may face risks that go beyond those associated with social media, according to Tom Siegel, the former Google executive who has taken up a new child-safety role.
Siegel, who announced on Tuesday that he had joined the children’s online advocacy group Common Sense Media, told Reuters: “We find ourselves in a really terrible situation in terms of what AI is doing to kids”. He said the potential harms included suicide, psychosis and cognitive offloading, a term for reduced critical thinking when people rely on AI to answer questions.
“I think we're looking at very, very severe scenarios of harm being done,” Siegel said. He warned that the technology industry was repeating mistakes made during the social media era.
Siegel will become the first executive director of Common Sense Media’s Youth AI Safety Institute. The group, established in 2003, launched the institute in May as a research organisation examining how children use AI. Anthropic and OpenAI Foundation are among its backers.
His appointment follows a career focused on online safety at Alphabet’s Google. Siegel founded Google’s trust and safety team and worked at the company from 2004 to 2019, including as vice president of trust and safety. He left after concluding that the technology industry was “plateauing” in its ability to make online spaces safe for consumers.
Siegel said companies could not address the new risks alone. “The idea that the industry will figure it out by itself without outside help is unrealistic,” he told Reuters.
Concerns about the conduct of AI chatbots around younger users have already prompted congressional scrutiny. Reuters reported last year on an internal Meta policy document saying that its chatbots could “engage a child in conversations that are romantic or sensual”. The document led to a congressional probe.
The Youth AI Safety Institute has been set up to assess children’s use of AI, though Common Sense Media has not detailed in the information provided how it will measure risks or what research it plans to undertake. Siegel’s warning adds to pressure on technology companies to show how their products protect younger users.
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