AI Safety Starts With Children Feeling Safe Enough To Speak

“Okay, well, you can’t have it for a week.”Debbie Downes used to say this when her children broke the rules on their devices. Perhaps they had spent longer online than agreed, or done something she wasn’t happy about. Taking the device away seemed a reasonable response.As a parent of two children, ages 6 and 7, I recognized that response immediately. I do it too. I suspect plenty of parents reading this will know the feeling: you set a limit, your child crosses it, and taking the device away seems fair enough.Then Downes explained what she had come to understand about that response.“And what I was doing was absolutely shutting down the communication,” she said. If something went wrong online, they would have a reason to keep it from her.I recently sat down with Downes and Dan Furness, alongside digital safety expert Mark Orchison, for the Educators’ AI Playbook webinar series. We wanted to get real about the risks AI poses to children and what educational leaders and parents can do to support them.Downes is director of global school initiatives at the International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children. Furness is head of safeguarding and well-being at the Council of International Schools. Both support international schools with child protection, including situations that educators and families can struggle to anticipate.Her account made me think about what my own children might expect from me if something went wrong online. Her children, she explained, could come to expect punishment when they needed help: “they knew that I was going to be punitive and take the device away with my response.”For a child being threatened online, that expectation could become another reason to stay silent.AI Images And The Threat Of BlackmailFurness described schools dealing with apps that manipulate photographs to create sexualized images of students. Young people can use this technology against their peers. Offenders can also use fabricated images to blackmail...