By Kenrick Cai
SAN FRANCISCO, Sept 22 (Reuters) - The founder of the trust and safety team at Alphabet's Google this week called for a slowdown in AI development, warning that the tech industry was repeating the same mistakes from the social media era, potentially causing even greater harm to children.
Social media companies are paying huge sums and facing thousands of lawsuits over claims they harmed young users, while governments around the world are working to curb minors' access to their platforms.
Reuters last year exclusively reported on an internal Meta policy document that stated its chatbots could "engage a child in conversations that are romantic or sensual," resulting in a congressional probe. Even so, regulation has yet to catch up with AI's breakneck pace of development.
"We find ourselves in a really terrible situation in terms of what AI is doing to kids," Tom Siegel, the former vice president of trust and safety at Google, told Reuters. "The idea that the industry will figure it out by itself without outside help is unrealistic."
Siegel's concerns mirror a growing fear among some tech insiders and academic researchers that AI poses a deeper threat to children than social media did, at a time when the industry is racing to add increasingly advanced features to chatbots that millions of young people already use daily.
SIEGEL JOINS YOUTH AI SAFETY INSTITUTE
Siegel announced on Tuesday that he had joined Common Sense Media, a children's online advocacy group. The non-profit, established in 2003, conducts research and reviews the suitability of various media for children. In May, it launched the Youth AI Safety Institute, a research organization to assess kids' AI use, for which Siegel will serve as the first executive director.
Anthropic and OpenAI Foundation, the nonprofit that controls OpenAI, are among the institute's backers.
Siegel said he planned to develop standards by which to hold AI firms accountable, and hoped to do so by working alongside those companies and third-party groups.
He previously worked at Google from 2004 to 2019, but left after concluding that the tech industry was "plateauing" in its ability to create safe online spaces for consumers. He then co-founded TrustLab, a startup that built tools to help companies detect safety threats, before stepping aside as CEO earlier this month to take on his new position.
As it stands, major AI companies are rolling out features to children without establishing sufficient guardrails, Siegel said.