What impact could AI have on children?

UNICEF Switzerland asked me this. At the delegates' assembly in September 2024 in Vevey, I was invited to give a talk on it. On the drive back, I then fully used AI to voice the slides and enhance them with my avatar. Images, speech and videos were of course all generated with AI. Join Mia on the AI journey!

Content / Transcript:

"Hello everyone, I was invited to speak on AI at UNICEF Switzerland's delegates' assembly. An inspiring talk about how artificial intelligence will influence a child's everyday life in Switzerland. After me, Professor Dr Peter Kirchschläger spoke about ethics in AI and stripped away the positive tone of my talk. Here is an accelerated version of the talk. Oh, and: the images, videos and this talk too were created entirely with AI. 🕓 Let's follow Mia through one day, but first let her introduce herself."

All right, then let's look at Mia's day now,

Sleep is central to health. In the morning, Mia is woken by an AI alarm clock, tuned to her sleep pattern. To get up, the NZZ is presented to her in audio form in a child-friendly way.

Together with her brother, she has breakfast. Mum is already at work, but her father joins them via hologram. He is currently in hospital for cancer treatment, which was detected early with AI and is now being treated specifically.

Thanks to self-driving cars, she has a safe journey to school.

Mia's deaf brother can go to school independently thanks to AI. His AI eye helps him master the school journey via audio on his own.

AI learning assistants coach each pupil individually and adapt to their learning speed. The teacher has more time to coach the children personally, and the learning groups can interact more with one another instead of getting bored with pure knowledge transfer.

But what is the effect of constant monitoring of children, as in China today, on mental health? Here, we should also set limits.

Cooking robots prepare Mia's perfect nutrition programme. Unfortunately, it does not work as well for her Tibetan friend: the AI is trained purely on the tastes and biology of Swiss children.

Voluntarily, Mia does a few extra tasks at home. The learning coach helps her. OpenAI recently presented the following.

"Interesting, isn't it? Because it is raining, Mia meets friends from all over the world online. Thanks to real-time translation, there are no language barriers any more. Sneak peek: OpenAI presented the following in May:"

Before Mia meets her friends, she wants to quickly post something on social media. But the app warns her that strangers could also work out where Mia lives from this video.

She meets a friend in a museum. A culture robot shows them the exhibition. It is free, by the way, thanks to the machine tax that applies to all AI and robot applications.

At dinner, her mother confesses that she lost her job at McDrive. She was replaced by AI. Her father, on the other hand, a former waste collector, was retrained and now trains AI-based waste-sorting robots. Some white-collar jobs will also be replaced by AI, but many professions will be supplemented and enhanced by artificial intelligence.

Suddenly, her uncle Stefan calls and asks her mother to transfer CHF 10,000 via Twint because her father urgently needs it. Through her media literacy, she knows that this is a deepfake. They are already a problem today, as we can see in the USA. Fake audio files were circulated about a headteacher, and bank employees were even persuaded via Teams calls with deepfake participants to transfer millions of dollars.

After an eventful day, a few AI-coached yoga and boxing sessions, Mia listens to a personalised, interactive audiobook. More imaginative than watching Netflix, isn't it?

The effects of new technologies are hard to predict. More than 15 years after the rise of social media, we are discussing restrictions for young people.🕓 And who would have thought that even dating apps could influence the social mix of couples? So...

it is important for society to set limits for AI. From the diversity of data to transparency in AI decisions and clear rules on liability and responsibility. A pharmaceutical company cannot simply launch a new medicine and see what happens. And yes, I am aware that regulation can at least slow innovation in the short term. In the longer term, I think sensible regulation is a shortcut to meaningful AI applications without major social problems, and it promotes real innovation for us as a society.

In this spirit, I conclude my talk with the words of Joanna Maciejewska: I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes.

Thank you for listening. This whole AI-based video was created on the journey home from Wöwee to Zurich. If you are interested in talks or training in the field of artificial intelligence for your company, you can simply get in touch with me.