In this blog, Saamya from the Childnet Youth Advisory Board looks at the Board’s first call, and their plan for the future.
On the 23rd of June 2023, the new board of the Childnet Youth advisory board met online for our first meeting together. To kick off the meeting, we introduced our name, age, location, pronouns and our favourite chocolates. We had a wide range of ages, and people from all over the UK.
It was very interesting to be introduced to so many people my age from all over the country who I thought would have many different perspectives, but as a group together, we had similar views on the rights and wrongs of the internet.
During the meeting, we discussed Snapchat AI and just AI in general- for example, ChatGPT. (…) A main theme in the discussion was how eerily humane the AI can be and how easily it could be manipulated. Group members also mentioned how you could take pictures of objects and send it to the AI, who would almost immediately recognise said object, which emphasised its scary intelligence.
We had interesting views on AI such as ChatGPT, with discussions about how the founder of modern AI thinks that the creation will eradicate humanity, and what people classify as AI is actually the language model, which is not the most damaging part of the creation. However, another argument mentioned was that while workers panic about losing their jobs to AI, more job opportunities could be opened through AI.
This month, the board was tasked with writing their bios for the website along with a picture to officially introduce ourselves to the world. We also had to vote for the Childnet Film Competition 2023, which was full of amazing entries from children all over the UK. Another task we were advised to do was to write up our varying and insightful thoughts on AI for Childnet’s blog.
Now that the Youth Board has started for this coming year, I am most looking forward to having interesting conversations with my peers about issues online. The Board is looking forward to general cooperation and building together as a team and learning from each other. All of us are also very excited for the upcoming residential and to get to meet each other offline!
Find out more about the Childnet Youth Advisory Board here.
