Washington, DC - While the US House took a long overdue step forward today by voting on the KIDS Act, they could have gone further if they had prioritized the young people affected by this legislation. We are grateful that the option to opt out of personalized recommendation systems, a key policy necessary to provide young people agency over their time online and one that YPA has been advocating for for years, is included. However, many crucial protections to young people are missing from this bill.
At a pivotal moment where we finally can pass legislation that could make real change, the KIDS Act falls short in several key places. The bill:
• Has chatbot provisions that fail to address human-like design features, which allows AI chatbots to emotionally manipulate young people and foster dependency through expressing sentience, emotions, and attachment
• Ties regulations of addictive features to a compulsive usage definition that would only apply once extreme harm has occurred
• Has no duty of care or incident reporting, allowing Big Tech to subvert accountability, transparency, and enforcement.
"Social media and now AI chatbots have driven a generational mental health crisis and disconnected young people from their communities for years. With such heavy implications on the future of our generation, it is important that we pass the strongest legislation possible today. Unfortunately, KIDS Act leaves several meaningful policy gaps that leave young people vulnerable to addictive features and allow bad actors escape real accountability" - Mick Tobin, Advocacy Director, Young People's Alliance
We urge the Senate to take these criticisms from various organizations across the responsible tech civil society space into consideration. In its current iteration, Young People's Alliance does not see this piece of legislation as a viable solution to one of the most pressing threats to our generations' social fabric. We strongly urge our legislators to fight for a stronger bill, inline with the 2024 KOSA that passed the senate by a 91-3 vote, and that restricts companies from designing chatbots with human-like AI features.
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About Young People's Alliance: Young People's Alliance is a bipartisan, Gen Z-led nonprofit with 4,000+ members across 90+ campuses in 16 states. The organization is focused on creating a new American Dream through advocacy on creating opportunity, affordability, and community for young people.
Contact: press@youngpeoplesalliance.org