IASEAI 2026 - UNESCO
Panel: AI and the Rights of Children
At IASEAI ’26, held at UNESCO in Paris, I chaired and joined the main stage panel on AI and Children’s Rights, with Anne-Sophie Seret, Clara Chappaz, James Ryan, and Tara Steele, opening remarks from Stuart Russell, and a youth perspective from Nikhil Gujral.
This session mattered because it marked a shift we’ve been working toward for some time. A year ago, it was still difficult to secure serious space for children and AI at major AI events. At IASEAI ’26, the topic was no longer treated as a side issue. It was placed where it belongs: at the center of the conversation on safe and ethical AI.
In my opening remarks, I argued that AI is entering childhood through education tools, toys, phones, chatbots, and conversational interfaces. For children and adolescents, these systems are not just sources of information. They can shape how young people learn, seek support, relate to others, disclose personal information, build trust, and form independent judgment.
Children and young people under 25 represent around 40% of the world’s population. Their brains, identities, relationships, and sense of autonomy are still developing. That means AI governance for children cannot stop at content moderation or online harm. It has to look at interaction patterns, personalization, emotional reliance, cognitive development, and the behavioral design of AI systems over time.
The panel also connected directly to the work we are building through everyone.AI, the Paris Peace Forum, and the iRAISE coalition: moving from high-level principles to measurable and auditable model behavior. The goal is to help close the gap between the speed of AI deployment and the slower pace of developmental evidence, by supporting research, standards, and evaluation tools that can better calibrate AI systems for young users.
The core governance challenge is simple: we cannot deploy first and assess for harm later. If AI systems are becoming part of childhood, their design and evaluation need to be informed by children’s rights, developmental science, and sustained collaboration across research, policy, civil society, youth, and industry.
