Ms Grace French:

We are here today on behalf of the Ombudsman for Children's Office, OCO, youth advisory panel and thank the Chairperson and the committee for inviting us. We welcome the committee’s decision to hold a special session on children. We believe that speaking to young people about AI is vital because AI is already a part of our lives. We are the group most likely to be impacted by AI but, right now, policies and laws have little or no focus on young people and our rights. We want to ensure that children’s voices are listened to and taken seriously as the Government develops its plans in this area in the years ahead. We welcome the recent announcement of Government plans to establish a national AI office. We feel this provides a perfect opportunity to create a structure within this office that routinely involves children and young people in decision-making related to AI.

Before we continue, we would like to highlight that we have published a report today setting out the views of our youth advisory panel regarding AI. We will draw from this report throughout these opening statements but would encourage the committee members to read our insights and recommendations in further detail after today's proceedings so they can hear the voices of every YAP member represented today, not just the two of us.

We would first like to highlight some of the impacts, both positive and negative, that we believe AI has on our rights as young people. The first concerns our right to education. Many young people already use AI to help with their schoolwork. It can be a helpful tool when we need to catch up on study, carry out research or summarise information. On top of that, we also believe that, if used sensibly, AI has the potential to assist teachers too whether it is by helping to reduce heavy workloads or by creating efficient ways to monitor student progress. At the same time, we realise that becoming overly dependent on AI can impact on young people’s ability to think critically, creatively and independently. If we do not strike the right balance in schools, we risk neglecting these crucial skills. AI should be used as a tool, not a crutch and it should not take away our ability to be self-reliant. When it comes to our right to information, there is no doubt that AI makes it much easier for young people to access information independently. However, we are well aware that the information AI gives us can often be unreliable, inaccurate or biased. This is all the more reason to continue to develop young people’s ability to think critically and to question sources.