Teen Panel Recap: AI & Youth Voice

Today, Give Us The Floor's Teen Art Director Jaise spoke on his first-ever webinar led by Grantmakers for Thriving Youth on AI and Youth Voice, and we couldn't be prouder! Youth have the most essential POV when it comes to all of the clouded discussions around AI, as Gen Alpha are literally growing up alongside this technology.

Some moments from the panel that stuck with me:

Jaise (age 17, Give Us The Floor) on seeing his art replaced in real time by a colleague: “It hurt my heart.”

Poorvita (age 17, Letters to Strangers) on recognizing when a friend was using AI responses during an argument: “It just made me feel a little bit like I wasn’t being respected; like she wasn’t meeting me where I was at.”

Poorvita on a Chatbot conversation that revealed how Chatbots tend to agree, rather than push back or reveal blind spots when asked for advice/insights: “Even I knew I was wrong on some level.”

Suzann (Girl Security) on bias in AI visuals: “[Kids seeing AI images] aren’t going to ask ‘Why are all of the teachers [that AI generates] female, or why are all of the pilots male?’”

I was also struck by an observation Poorvita made on the way tech is named. When Siri was introduced, studies found that "she" received a fair amount of abusive language commands. Will a more masculine-named program like Claude or Grok receive the same treatment? Food for thought.

During this event, Alison Lee, Ph.D and Marisol Jimenez from The Rithm Project shared findings from their "Youth, AI, and the Relationships That Shape Them" research study, and one stat surprised me, in a good way:

A lot fewer young folks are turning to AI for mental health support than media would lead us to believe.

It's worth reading their whole study.

I can't get over how much tech literacy younger generations have to possess in order to navigate any of this stuff. At least for this group of panelists, their level of tech savvy outmatches most grown-ups. They already seem to recognize that a lot of what we see on the internet requires a grain of salt. Their awareness of how AI can be both beneficial and harmful is clear-eyed and balanced.

At some point in the discussion, Jaise said, "I don't consider myself an expert in AI," which is humble, considering he literally wrote our first-ever internal AI policy for the org. In the "aw shucks" self-deprecation of that moment, I recognized something else: he genuinely doesn't realize how much more he knows compared to most.

To me, this is the conversation we really need to be having in the whole alarmist "Don't get left behind" messaging around AI. It's not as important to know how to use the tools; it's about knowing how to spot when they're being used to target you.

The TL;DR of it all: despite AI's best efforts, for now, the kids may be alright. But we, as grown-ups, may just need to catch up.

- Kat Eves, COO
Give Us The Floor