Introducing MyData4Children Zine 2024

Numerous studies and real-life events have shown us that emergent technologies affect children, for good and bad. However, the dominant narrative is framed with an individualistic focus, putting a single child or a person in a child’s circle of trust on the spot, leaving many of us feeling defeated, nervous, and exhausted. The purpose of this zine is to highlight a section of this narrative that is often overlooked: The collective and long-term impacts of digital systems. The zine serves as an experimental and creative space to share our stories, lived experiences, and imaginations. 

This is an offering for you to join us as we shift focus and find hope to believe a safer, more trustworthy, and empowering digital future is possible. 

If you would like to contribute to the series, please send an email to paula.bello@mydata.org. Join our Slack channel #mydata4children.

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MyData Community: Here is a challenge for you – Design a Robot School

I wished it was my idea.  But it is not.  It is an idea by young children. These kids have been learning about data, digital footprints and AI as part of an after-school program for 5-12-year-olds. I was conducting in an international primary school. 

The initial lessons focused on the basics of data and digital footprints.  The children were asked to illustrate how they understood data and digital footprint after the lecture.  One 6-year-old drew a very descriptive and clear explanation, in which all the data he generates with his device would create extensive footprints. According to his understanding, those footprints can be categorised in data for good use (green, e.g., to give him access to material that interests him and ensure he is safe), for bad use (red, e.g., to sell him things or confuse him into doing certain things), or not sure (blue, e.g., that data that just stays there without anything happening to it).  It was one of the clearest infographics I have seen.

Once the concept of data and digital footprint was (more or less) clear, we moved on to AI and how AI is trained using data. The lesson included an exercise to design a robot and define how the robot would learn to do the tasks it is supposed to perform.  When asked to share their ideas, a 5-year-old child said ‘My robot won’t be trained on the internet, because I want it to be kind and not all things on the internet are kind.  I think I need to train it myself’. Building on that, a second 5-year-old kid said ‘My robot will go to a robot school, very similar to this one, with very nice and kind (human) teachers. I don’t know what they will teach my robot, but I don’t need to because I know the teachers will do a good job’.

My jaw dropped more than once at the depth and originality of their reasoning.  How can young children have such clear understanding and such straightforward solutions?  Could not we change the narrative of fear and hopelessness to a narrative of rethinking the system and the empowerment of people in that system as children do?  Could we repurpose kids’ innovative ideas to inspire us adults to think out of the box?

So, now back to you MyData community:

How would you design a MyData Robot/AI School?

Here is a very loose brief to get you started, but feel free to create your own brief:

–   All teachings must adhere to MyData principles and to certified curricula 

–   All data used to teach must be compliant, ethical and consented

–   All algorithms must be checked for biases and manipulation

– All teachers are held accountable for what they teach

–   All robots and AI ‘students’ graduate after demonstrating their value and capacity to serve the humans (not the other way around)

Please share your ideas below and join our Slack channel #mydata4children.  

Be bold and brave – like these children.