“I think we're looking at very, very severe scenarios of harm being done,” he said.
He suggested that the companies had immediate steps they could take to better protect young people, citing risks ranging from suicide and psychosis to cognitive offloading, a term used to describe decreased critical thinking caused by leaning on AI to answer questions.
Anthropic and OpenAI could enforce more robust age verification measures to stop underage kids from accessing their chatbots, he said. His former employer Google could easily implement an option to turn off AI Overviews and AI Mode in its search engine, he added, in the same way that it already has a toggle that allows users to filter out sexually explicit content.
While these measures could affect usage or profits in the short term, AI companies that do not act will run the risk of lawsuits and regulation that could impact their business more heavily, Siegel added.
Asked to respond to Siegel's comments, a Google spokesman said parents have controls to turn off a child's access to the search engine entirely. "Our AI Search features are an incredibly useful way for kids and teens to learn, explore and make sense of information and the world," the spokesperson said.
After initial publication of this story, Google added in a statement that its AI tools undergo a "rigorous" testing and evaluation process focused on child safety issues.
An OpenAI spokesperson said the company uses “account and behavioral signals” in addition to self-reported age to identify underage users. “While no single age-assurance method is perfect, we continuously test and improve these systems, including against attempts to bypass safeguards.”
Anthropic did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
At Common Sense Media, Siegel said a top priority would be scaling up independent standards similar to car crash testing that would measure the risk of publicly available AI tools. The effectiveness will depend in part on the willingness of AI companies to collaborate, the likelihood of which Siegel said was not certain, but was high enough for him to take the job.
