Imperial College London has received £300,000 to investigate how children’s interactions with AI may affect their confidence, independence and wellbeing.
The two-year project, Thinking for Themselves, will examine how children use AI tools, including large language models, and produce evidence to inform policy and technology development. It is the first award to Imperial from Bukhman Philanthropies.
Sophia Batchelor, an analytics fellow at Imperial’s Institute of Global Health Innovation, will lead the project’s quantitative and experimental research. The team will also work with an advisory group of children and parents to include their perspectives in the study.
“AI is already so pervasive in the lives of children, and significant research is needed to understand the impact modern LLMs have on how children think and form an understanding of the world,” Batchelor said.
Daria Bukhman, co-founder and chair of Bukhman Philanthropies, said independent research was needed because AI was changing how children learn and think faster than researchers could assess its effects.