2023-09-07 20:30:47
Artificial intelligence will inevitably be present in every child’s life, which may worry parents. Unesco on Thursday called on governments to “rapidly regulate” the use of AI tools like the viral chatbot ChatGPT in classrooms, including by restricting their use for the youngest children.
In a guide released Thursday, the United Nations considers that public authorities are not ready to manage the ethical issues linked to the integration of artificial intelligence programs in schools. The guide suggests that governments define a minimum age for using generative AI, which could not be lower than 13 years.
Vulnerability to manipulation
Due to a US law, ChatGPT has already set this limit for these users, but “many commentators believe that this threshold is too low and advocate raising the threshold to 16,” the report points out. In schools, replacing teachers with such programs could affect children’s emotional well-being and leave them vulnerable to manipulation, the Paris-based organization warns.
According to the Director General of UNESCO, the Frenchwoman Audrey Azoulay, quoted in a press release, “generative AI can be a tremendous opportunity for human development, but it can also be the source of damage and harm”. “It cannot be integrated into education without public engagement and strong government safeguards and regulations,” she added.
Generative AI programs accessible to the general public have multiplied since the end of 2022, when ChatGPT, created by the Californian start-up OpenAI, demonstrated its ability to generate essays, poems and coherent conversations from succinct questions. This growth has also raised fears about new forms of plagiarism or cheating within schools and universities, without however reducing the attractiveness of an education market considered potentially very lucrative.
The UNESCO recommendation states that AI tools have the potential to help children with specific educational needs, for example by generating subtitles, provided that teachers, users and researchers help to design them, and that governments regulate their use.
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