By Clare Duffy, CNN
New York (CNN) — Since independent vehicle crash testing began in the mid-1990s, automakers have been incentivized to make safety changes that have saved thousands of lives each year.
Now, a new group is hoping to take a similar approach to artificial intelligence.
Nonprofit media watchdog Common Sense Media is launching the Youth AI Safety Institute, an industry-backed, independent research and testing lab to study the risks AI tools may pose to children and teens. It will aim to provide information to parents and families about various AI tools and set safety benchmarks for tech firms.
AI companies are locked in a race to build the most powerful, widely used models, and that sometimes means speed is prioritized over safety testing. Because AI tools are complex systems with a range of different uses, ranking their safety will likely be far trickier than judging how a car responds in a crash.
But Common Sense Media and the board of top AI, education and health leaders it recruited to oversee the Youth AI Safety Institute believe that solely relying on AI firms to self-police on safety isn’t enough to protect young people. Existing third-party AI safety organizations largely focus on societal-level and existential risks, such as job loss or even human extinction, rather than consumer-friendly safety ratings aimed at everyday use.
The goal is for the public spotlight and third-party standards to spark what Common Sense Media CEO James Steyer called a “race to the top” for tech firms to make safety fixes to improve their standing.
Leading AI firms invest in safety research to “make their models as good as they possibly can, but there’s no independent measure of that,” John Giannandrea, Apple’s former AI strategy chief who joined the institute’s advisory board, told CNN. “We don’t really know which models are more appropriate for kids at a certain age than others, and I think the only real way to do that is to have an independent set of public standards.”
The launch comes as multiple families have sued AI companies alleging that chatbots encouraged their children’s suicides. A recent CNN investigation found that AI chatbots advised teen test accounts on how to commit violence. Grok, xAI’s chatbot, came under fire earlier this year for sharing sexualized images of women and children in response to users’ “digital undressing” prompts. And growing AI adoption in classrooms has raised questions about whether the technology could stunt learning.
“I think many parents and educators and citizens feel we’re at a catastrophic moment as AI is reshaping the lives of children and families and schools and, quite frankly, all of society,” Steyer told CNN exclusively ahead of announcing the group on Tuesday.
Independent youth safety benchmarks
The Institute will start with a $20 million annual budget, backed by OpenAI, Anthropic and Pinterest, as well as the Walton Family Foundation, Goldman Sachs Managing Director Gene Sykes and other philanthropists. Funders will have no say in the group’s operation or research, according to Common Sense.
The group’s advisory board will also include Mehran Sahami, chair of Stanford University School of Engineering’s computer science department; Dr. Jenny Radesky, director of University of Michigan Medical School’s developmental behavioral pediatrics division; and Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, who served as California’s first-ever surgeon general — bringing together expertise in research, standards settin