RMIT University Media Release
In the United States, one in five teenagers use artificial intelligence chatbots for romantic relationships. Almost half consider AI to be their friend. Teenagers in Australia too are increasingly turning to AI bots for connection. An RMIT expert explains how the bonds teens are developing with AI chatbots have the potential to impact emotional development. Watch the video here.
Professor Diana Bowman, Dean, RMIT School of Law:
“Wherever you stand on the AI debate, the fact is young people are bonding with AI and the impact on their mental health and development could stay with them for life.
“When teens connect with AI instead of their peers, they don’t experience the difficult parts of relationships. Adolescence is a tumultuous time for most of us, but it’s that turmoil that helps strengthen emotional regulation, conflict management, and a person’s capacity for healthy relationships.
“AI chatbots validate and support users without rejection or conflict. They can reinforce and even reward negative behaviours like control and jealousy, rather than providing support, human empathy, or new perspectives.
“On top of this, they are designed to be addictive, further pulling young people from real life relationships. They may have been trained using biased, inaccurate, and potentially dangerous data.
“In Australia we have seen some hopeful changes in regulating this kind of tech like the federal government’s recently proposed digital duty of care.
“Regulations that respect adolescents’ autonomy and online use, while preventing them from bonding with and becoming emotionally dependent on AI chatbots is necessary.
“This isn’t the sole responsibility of governments. AI companies have their part to play to ensure the responsible development and training of their technologies, and parents and caregivers also need to take an active role in promoting the safe use of technology by their children.”
Professor Diana Bowman is the Dean of RMIT’s School of Law. Her research is focused on the governance of emerging technologies and public health law.
Read the article: When Teens Bond with Machines: A Developmental Perspective on the New Frontier of Generative AI Policy and Adolescents’ Relationships published in The American Journal of Public Health.
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The AI Data Centres being lauded across Australian media are a foreign owned multinational corporation(s) parasitising the electricity and water supply of the often depressed regional centres where they are being proposed.
Population in regional centres have been hollowed out by the neglect of successive governments, removing ”expense” from geographically distant centres rather than their own electorates. Think the closure of the Great Northern Railway (GNR) between Armidale and Jennings Wallangarra, 216 km of voters without subsidised public transport to link to the world, or the distant government services removed locally ”for economic savings”.
Funny how the Greiner NSW neo-liberal COALition misgovernment directed the funds from closing regional railway lines directly into subsidising metropolitan passenger suburban railway services, now running at about 90+% cost to government.
Then there is the Transport NSW corporate silo structure where each of the four siloes refuses to talk to any other silo. The COALition would blame this structure for the HUGE cost overrun of the M1 Bankstown driverless suburban railway line ….. where ”overnight” the poor ideological purchasing cost of rolling stock and necessary changes to infrastructure has been reported as blowing out from $25 BILLION to $30 BILLION, just in the few weeks of track trialling!!
Keep mobile phones out of schools, limit kids time on the Internet, get all kids outside mucking about ….. city life is better when you are outside breathing the diesel fumes & particulates??
NO!! Life is better when you are outside in a rural location breathing clean air, free from traffic noise pollution and overcrowded living conditions.