Safeguarding expert Fr Zollner: AI offers risks and opportunities for child safety

By Christine Seuss 

On the 21st and 22nd of March, the Vatican is hosting a conference entitled ‘Risks and Opportunities of AI for Children’, organised by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in collaboration with the World Childhood Foundation and the Pontifical Gregorian University.

One of the organisers is Fr Hans Zollner, a Jesuit priest and psychologist and one of the Church’s leading experts on safeguarding.

“Artificial intelligence has many positive aspects, which we all utilise, whether we know it or not," Fr Zollner told Vatican News. “However, it also has many risk factors, especially for children, young people and other vulnerable groups. For example, the fact that it is much easier to manipulate and influence children, or the fact they that they come into contact with content such as pornography or are exposed to terrorist or extreme political views."

Children and vulnerable people in particular do not have the tools at hand to critically scrutinise what appears on their screens, especially when it comes to fake news, images, videos, Fr Zollner said. But AI offers some opportunities too:

“The advantages that undoubtedly exist,” Zollner says, “include the fact that parents can be supported in monitoring children's online activities, and that AI can in principle also be used to control harmful content”.

However, this type of use must also be intentionally willed by “social media companies and, of course, by everyone involved in the education and upbringing of children and young people.’

Opportunities for education

Among the opportunities for the educational sector, Fr Zollner sees above all the possibility of “personalising learning opportunities and educational content”, which it is possible to deliver more quickly and in a more targeted manner.

AI, Zollner says, “if deployed appropriately”, also offers the opportunity to identify cyberbullying or cyber grooming more quickly.

The Casina Pio IV in the Vatican gardens, where the conference is being held

Participation of vulnerable groups

This is why young people and representatives of vulnerable groups were also deliberately involved in the conference currently underway.

Zollner said he wanted participants to hear from "victims of abuse who have been ‘groomed’ by such methods, which artificial intelligence has also made easier - in other words, people who have been drawn into a relationship of trust by people who then wanted to exploit and abuse them, and who have then been abused in sometimes terrible ways.”

"This is also what our panel on Saturday is about. Protect, provide, participate. Because the idea behind it is that children and young people need to be educated and given the help they need to set themselves apart and to work with others, with their parents, with their families, with their friends, to defend themselves if they know or if they sense that something is going very wrong."

In addition to victims, the conference features government officials responsible for the area in question, representatives of police forces and technology companies. Zollner points out that, in particular, tech bosses must develop an awareness of the shared responsibility they bear if they choose to not to focus on the protection of vulnerable individuals in cyberspace.

A focus for a long time

Back in 2017, Zollner’s Centre for Child Protection at the Gregorian University organised an international conference which resulted in the ‘Declaration on the Dignity of the Child in the Digital World’.

“I see this conference in collaboration with the Pontifical Academy of Science and the Queen of Sweden's Childhood Foundation as a continuation of this very important event,” said Zollner. “I continue to see it as a sign that we need more research, more cooperation among the various disciplines, including in science, but of course also more than that. And I also see it as a sign that the voice of the religions and the Catholic Church is and remains an important one on this issue.”

The fact that Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin wanted to give a speech at the current conference also shows how important the topic is to the Vatican, Zollner said.

“I think that this conference is an important sign”, Fr Zollner said, “that we in the Church continue to be committed to a sector of life that is very important for all people, and reaches practically everyone in this world. I also think it’s important that we also remind those who can help to make the virtual world a safer place, both politically and socially as well as financially and economically, of their moral responsibility. Especially where politicians from various parties and other decision-makers in society find it difficult to point out the negative aspects of artificial intelligence.’