Street Soldiers: AI & kids, the hidden dangers

Box 5 and Hot 97 present Street Soldiers with Lisa Evers. I'm so glad you're joining us for this episode of Street Soldiers on AI and kids, the hidden dangers. I'm your host, Lisa Evers. Artificial intelligence is a tool so powerful and potentially dangerous, some leaders say it's time to pump the brakes. Others say it's a tech tool everyone should learn. And now new warnings that it may be too much to handle Mayor Zoran Mamdani made national headlines when he announced a one-year ban on AI for New York City school students from kindergarten through grade 8. Some tech leaders condemn the ban as a missed opportunity to learn a transformational tool. But parents groups like Mothers Against Media Addiction say few, if any, guidelines are in place, especially to protect kids' privacy. So just like with smartphones, social media, all of it, the best approach is delay, delay, delay. There is no reason to rush a product into our children's hands unless we know that it's safe by design. Psychiatrist Dr. Yalda Safai says the instant gratification of AI and hectic feedback loop with chatbots can negatively impact a child's development. Dr. Safai says boredom is actually an important part of a child's development. It helps them become creatives, and they need to become creatives. When they're bored, they'll find a way to occupy themselves. If you give them a device, you're never going to allow them to think for themselves and come up with things to do. There are only a few federal laws on the books about AI use and none specifically about overreach in schools. Tech giant Microsoft became the first company to reach agreements with two major teachers' unions on protections for kids. Other companies may follow their lead. These companies are dying to get into education. If they had a practice or a product that had proven outcomes and actual ability to help to teach students, we'd be seeing it everywhere. And I think the fact that we don't is very, very telling. Let's take this to our panel and find out what they have to say. Joining me is Dr. Eric Abrams. He's an education professor at Iona University. Eric, thank you so much for being with us. Thanks for having me, Elisa. We appreciate it. Also joining us is Julie Scalpo. She's the founder and executive director of the national organization called MAMA. It's Mothers Against Media Addiction. Julie, great to have you with us on the show. Thanks for addressing this topic. Thank you so much. And also with us is Dr. Yalda Safai. She's a psychiatrist. She's also worked with many teens. Dr. Safai, thank you so much for being with us. Great to be back, Elisa. Thank you. First of all, Eric, I want to start with you with the education because Iona, we know and we've had one of your colleagues on the show before talking about you guys are taking this hybrid approach at the university level. What about for kids? Yeah, that's a great question. You know, we see the students entering Iona University and, of course, they come to us at a range. I spend a lot of time inside schools. I do student teaching, so I'm in observing student teachers pretty constantly. And, you know, just like there's a very broad approach there as well. Of course, the mayor just announced his moratorium on AI technologies, which I think, you know, for the biggest school system in America, it's a very bold approach. And I think that a school system of this size needs a very bold approach. But, you know, we don't know if there's a right answer between – it's not an on-off switch. It's not full exposure or none at all. So at Iona University, we try to take a more balanced approach where we try to recognize the limits of the technology and the benefits of the technology and the way that it impacts the living, breathing students in the classroom. Julie, we continue to learn about the dangers of social media. We talk about that for children, especially as we see these major lawsuits against some of the biggest named platforms coming, where the technology is actually created to induce kids to spend more time, to get more involved. What are your concerns about AI? Would you say they're similar or they're even greater? So social media has relied on algorithms to recognize what interests young people and users the most and then serve them up ever more addictive, ever more extreme content. And that's why social media is so harmful, because a child that might search for healthy recipes, for example, is sucked into an algorithm that then sends them eating disorder content or even self-harm content. So algorithms can be very dangerous. They affect what humans believe. And recently, just last week, we saw that some hikers had to be rescued because they relied on AI to give them a route to do an extreme hike and to give them advice on how much food and water to pack. And it was completely inaccurate. So AI often gives misinformation or information that's just wrong. The tech companies call these hallucinations. But for students, getting wrong information can really confuse them on what they're supposed to learn. So I think Eric's response was really smart. This isn't exactly about an either-or. But Lisa, at Mama, we're not worried about kids falling behind on AI. I think that that is a message that the tech companies want you to believe so that you will rush their products into schools. Remember Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Bill Gates, those guys didn't even have computers growing up, and they turned out to be some of the greatest inventors of our age. And so just like we want students to be great drivers, we don't start teaching driver's ed when they're five. So I think that the mayor's decision in New York, and also we're seeing in Los Angeles and in Florida and Chicago, movement to put a temporary ban on AI in schools just until we can make sure that these products are safe, that they're developmentally appropriate, and most importantly, that they don't displace the critical learning experiences students need to be excellent at reading and writing. We've seen student reading and math scores plummeting, and a new report this week shows American 15-year-olds are reading at their lowest levels in 25 years. And one of the reasons for that is because we rush so much tech into the classroom. Dr. Yalda Safai, what are your concerns about the use of AI? Does it actually affect a kid's brain? So a few concerns in my field is, first of all, kids are using a chatbot as their therapist, as the person they confine in, as the person they get advice from. Not their parents, not their teachers, none of that. It's a chatbot. A piece of technology is programmed to keep you happy and engaged in it. Chatbots rarely disagree with you. If they did, you would stop using them, right? So the problem I'm seeing is people are confiding in this chatbot, and the chatbot is agreeing with them, no matter how distorted or, I would say, even delusional sometimes their thought process or their thinking might be. The chatbot is not designed to put a pause on it or analyze it or disagree with it. So I always tell people, you know, this is a great piece of information to get information about general topics, but you should not be confining your deepest, darkest secrets or asking for personal advice. Remember, your data is being stored somewhere. It's part of some network. I believe there's been four cases where AI has driven people to take their own lives. I think in one case, they even recommended ways that a person could possibly commit suicide, which is mind-blowing. I mean, these guardrails are not there yet. So I tell people, I tell my patients, please proceed with caution when you're using AI. Don't go away. We're back right after this. Julie, in terms of the, you know, we heard a lot for quite a while about the digital divide between kids that were in fully resourced communities, well-resourced communities, and other kids in under-resourced or underserved communities. Do you see any economic differences in the use of AI? Well, I think it's great that you brought up the digital divide because the new digital divide that we have in this century is with the kids who have the affluence in their families to ensure they get adequate real-life experiences and the kids who are spending most of their time online. You know, my kids have been exposed to social media and AI, but luckily my husband and I have been able to involve them in sports, take them outside, and they've had lots of opportunities to grow and acquire all of the basic building blocks they need to function academically, socially, emotionally. Now what we're seeing is kids whose families don't have all those resources and our, you know, child care is very expensive. Kids are spending eight, ten, twelve hours a day online and they're not getting the skills they need to be able to function as healthy adults. We're not anti-technology at Mama. We think it can be fun, it can be helpful, but we think there's a time and a place for it and that it's not appropriate to displace all of the time-tested methods of learning with papers, pencils, books, and teacher engagement. Bring back the computer card, bring back a computer lab, and teach children digital tools and citizenship at an appropriate time in their education. Dr. Yelda Safar, is there an addictive nature to AI and are you concerned that there's not even an age verification requirement? If we're talking about addictive potential, just like social media, just like video games that have been around for a long, long time, they're meant to keep you engaged with it, right? Video games, when I was a kid we used to play video games. They've been around for 30, 40 plus years, right? They are very addictive, so it really comes down to the parents to be able to set limits and tell the kids when enough is enough. Chatbots are the same exact thing. They're meant to keep you engaged. This is just how these devices are. This is just how this technology is. Social media is incredibly addictive and it's been around for 25 years. So I always tell parents, like, set limits from a very young age. You can't tell your kids not to do something. They're going to find a way to do it, okay? And AI is here to stay, just like social media, just like video games have been. Finding a way to appropriately use it, you have to teach the kids how to learn a seatbelt when they're using a piece of technology. I agree with almost everything Dr. Safar said except one thing. Yes, it's a parent's job to set limits, and yes, it's a parent's job to teach your children what's appropriate use of technology and what's not. But nobody expects me, as a parent, to keep the entire food supply safe. Nobody expects me, you know, I have to buckle my kid up, but nobody expects me to put up the traffic lights and the stop signs. So right now in this country, Congress has not passed a single piece of legislation to make social media or AI safer. Since the 1990s, and it should not be legal for tech companies to send your children videos about how to kill yourself. It should not be legal for AI apps to give students information about how to conduct a shooting or, in one case, an AI tutor answered a question that a child asked that said, how do I make fentanyl? So we have some real risks happening to our kids, and it's very important that Congress and state lawmakers nationwide take action without delay to ensure these products are safe by design. Eric, I know you want to jump in here, and you've taught in some of these inner-city classrooms at different grade levels. Give us your take on that. They're all using it constantly, and they may say that they're not or claim that they're not, but the temptation, I think, is far too great. It's so infinitely adaptable and tempting because it's so much easier than thinking. Thinking is hard. Thinking is complicated. Thinking takes time and work and effort and friction, and it doesn't get any easier the more you do it. And I think that what we're seeing for the young person who is situated in a very complicated world, who's looking at a very complicated future, it becomes near impossible to negotiate. And that's why I'm in favor of things like a moratorium. And if you think about the pedagogical reasons for having AI in the classroom, we hear about AI literacy. We hear about the demands of the job market. And first of all, I'm not convinced that AI literacy is an actual functioning literacy. We have on our hands the most intuitive computational technology that has ever existed. If you could use language, you can use ChatGPT. If you could use language, you could use Gemini. You don't even need to type. You could just use your voice. It's accessible to everyone everywhere. So I don't think you need to learn explicitly how to use it. What you need to learn is to have judgment, to be a good reader, a good thinker, and AI is not going to teach you that. Human teachers with time-tested approaches and care and love for students, that's what's going to teach you that. Dr. Safai, what about the amount of time the kids are spending on this? I mean, there is that reality about kids that don't have that much. They're going to be spending a lot more time on it than kids that are middle class that can go to summer camp, can participate in sports. What do you think about that? Yes, so I'm glad you mentioned that. I always say kids need to be bored in life because boredom is where creative thinking happens, things like that. And that's really important for brain development. Kids, however, will not choose boredom on their own. They will find something to occupy their time with. So if you leave them alone in a house or by themselves, they will find that video game. They will find social media. They will find the computer to occupy themselves. They likely won't reach for a book. They will reach for something that's much more addictive that will spike their dopamine a lot higher. So it is a big issue. As we mentioned before, this piece of technology, just like social media, just like video games, is meant to keep their user engaged. It spikes a substance in a child's brain or anybody's brain called dopamine. Dopamine makes you feel good. Dopamine makes you feel motivated, engaged. And that feeling is incredibly addictive. It's like a rush you get. So a child is always going to pick that rush over anything else. Up until now, the Pediatric Society has said that screen time for kids under the age of 2, period, is a big no-no. Whether that's social media, whether that's watching television, whether there's access to the Internet or anything like that, under the age of 2, kids should not have access to it. I would say when it comes to a piece of technology like AI or social media or video games, that age limit should be a lot higher because you want to give the brain enough time to make good synapses. What about with AI where you get the instant answer and you get somebody is constantly, like the AI, you think it is, but it's the AI, the technology is yours paying attention to you and you're getting these answers in like a nanosecond or maybe when you try to ask your mother or your father, they're busy and they're like, honey, wait a minute, let me just finish this. I'll be right over there. What about that danger? Lisa, do you remember when we had AOL and you had to sit in front of a monitor while it made this weird noise for like five minutes before you could connect? Dial up. Exactly. If any one of us right now had to do that, we would lose our minds because we're used to accessing something quick. It's the same with a kid. Once they've used a piece of AI once, they're never going to want to sit and do long research on the Internet for a group project or project at school. They're always going to try to use the thing that's giving them the results faster. And we don't blame them. So once you expose the kid to this piece of technology, you're not going back. I'm so glad you brought up the fact that this technology is so sycophantic. I mean, that's the word they use. They're actually training this computer code to talk as if it's a human being. I was on a panel recently with someone who works at Google Gemini and her entire job is to change the responses to make them more human-like. And what does that do to a child? It's got to be very confusing to hear, I love you, I care so much about you, you mean so much to me. You know, I think of those things like mom words. Those are things that your mom says to you and we don't think it should be legal. We don't think that these companies should be allowed to allow their computer code to speak like a human being. That's something, you know, a change they could easily make that would help a child differentiate when they're talking to a machine versus a human. But Eric, what do you think about that, you know, making it so human and basically cloning our human language style? Yeah, you know, the way these models operate is that they consume oceans of data. Yes, these companies, they want your eyes on the screen. And in order to do that, of course they're going to be very kind to us and very complimentary of us. In the mayor's moratorium, there is also a moratorium on one-to-one screen time, which I think, yes, awesome, we love that. However, there is a loophole for assessments. Students as early as kindergarten get parked in front of screens to complete these benchmarks and assessments, oftentimes for hours and hours and hours. We park kids in front of screens and we make them have this one-to-one relationship with the screen. And I don't think there's any parent in the world that thinks, yes, get my kid in front of a screen more. I want more of that. Dr. Safai, in terms of recommendations for parents, for caregivers around this AI, is there a certain point where you go like, okay, this is getting to a point where it's dangerous for that person's, and adults to that person's mental health? So this is a new piece of technology right now. And up until this point, like we talked about at the beginning, there's been seven lawsuits already against OpenAI and Sam Altman because AI supercharged harmful delusions in its users. There was four cases, as we mentioned, that it helped the users take their own lives. The software companies have not developed guardrails to stop, to be able to safely assess risk, call the police, stop the engagement if they see anything concerning. So because this is where we are right now, I think for parents at this point, with this technology, it's important to monitor what your kid is typing into the system. Erica, what do you think about, you know, we talk about guardrails, we talk about warning systems, you see on social media, like there's certain words that can't be used around crimes, around violence, around those kinds of things. You get flagged. What do you think about something like that with AI? I think that there needs to be intentional implementation in schools. And I think that could be, that could happen in a variety of ways. I think that number one thing that the educator has to be accountable to is who is being allowed to think in this classroom. It should always be the student who is able to primarily do the thinking in the classroom. And I think that if educators think about their practice from that perspective, then we can have healthy relationships with AI perhaps, as long as we don't allow it to do the thinking for us. Julie, final word for parents? I think that when it comes to keeping your kids safe and ensuring their well-being, that parents need to fight back against the addiction to media that all of these companies want us to have. If you visit our website, wearemama.org, we have a one-page document on eight questions for parents to ask about AI in schools. And we encourage parents to ask their teachers questions if AI has been introduced. Ask your child questions and make sure you see what they're seeing. That's the best way to learn what they're exposed to. And join us in demanding that lawmakers take action. We need to get these laws passed everywhere to keep our kids safe. Thanks for joining us for this episode of Street Soldiers on AI and kids, the hidden dangers. You can watch it again and share it on our Fox 5 NY YouTube page and on the free Fox Local app. Remember, use your mind. It's your best weapon. I'm Lisa Evers. Let's push for peace, love, and justice for all.