Ms Hannah Kunzman
Doctoral Candidate, Harvard University, Department of Government
Hannah Kunzman is a doctoral candidate at Harvard University, specializing in normative political
theory and the history of political thought. Her research interests include agency, responsibility, and
education, and she has worked on projects related to civic education as part of Harvard’s Allen Lab
for Democracy Renovation and the Task Force on the Value of Experiential Civic Learning. Her
dissertation project is about childhood, what it means to grow up, and the relationship between
freedom and dependence.
Ms Hannah Kunzman presents her work at the Young Scholars Session.
Title: A Care Ethical Approach to Children’s Agency in the Age of AI
Abstract: Traditional philosophical conceptions of agency, which foreground autonomy, see children as diminished or incomplete agents. Tamar Schapiro, for example, argues that children have a “half-full/half-empty” status in the moral community: while they are not merely objects—they can, for example, make claims upon adults to protect their interests or provide for them in certain ways—they also are not full agents because their actions are not yet entirely their own. Children’s diminished status as agents is what justifies adults’ “asymmetric authority” to “check and regulate” children’s behavior. This conception of children’s agency tends to focus on the ways in which they are exceptions to a standard picture of the agent and the ways in which adults can justifiably direct children’s behavior. Considering the challenge of children and AI through this understanding of childhood agency leads us to focus on the ways in which their diminished rational capacity might necessitate legal or social protections. But this approach misses some of what makes thinking about children’s relationship to AI a special challenge. One of the strange reversals generated by this technological era is that young people tend to use tools like AI more adeptly and more frequently than their parents and other adults. In many ways, then, children are thus co-creating this new part of the technological world: they are not merely individuals in need of perfections from its danger, but active participants who may also see parts of it that adults do not. I argue that we can gain productive insights when viewing the question of children and AI through the lens of feminist care ethics, which emphasizes the moral importance of relationships and the responsibilities that emerge from them. A recognition of children’s rights to privacy or freedom of expression may guide the development of laws about children’s tech usage, but it doesn’t fully address the ways in which technology can alter a child’s concrete relationships, which play a vital role in shaping their lives.
The presentation will proceed in three parts. First, I will review prominent philosophical conceptions of the child and child agency. Second, I will explain how an ethics of care can reimagine children’s agency in the AI space to leverage the possibility for responsive relationships. Finally, I will consider how these insights inform contemporary applications of AI systems in children’s education.
Ms Hannah Kunzman presents her work at the Young Scholars Session.
Title: A Care Ethical Approach to Children’s Agency in the Age of AI
Abstract: Traditional philosophical conceptions of agency, which foreground autonomy, see children as diminished or incomplete agents. Tamar Schapiro, for example, argues that children have a “half-full/half-empty” status in the moral community: while they are not merely objects—they can, for example, make claims upon adults to protect their interests or provide for them in certain ways—they also are not full agents because their actions are not yet entirely their own. Children’s diminished status as agents is what justifies adults’ “asymmetric authority” to “check and regulate” children’s behavior. This conception of children’s agency tends to focus on the ways in which they are exceptions to a standard picture of the agent and the ways in which adults can justifiably direct children’s behavior. Considering the challenge of children and AI through this understanding of childhood agency leads us to focus on the ways in which their diminished rational capacity might necessitate legal or social protections. But this approach misses some of what makes thinking about children’s relationship to AI a special challenge. One of the strange reversals generated by this technological era is that young people tend to use tools like AI more adeptly and more frequently than their parents and other adults. In many ways, then, children are thus co-creating this new part of the technological world: they are not merely individuals in need of perfections from its danger, but active participants who may also see parts of it that adults do not. I argue that we can gain productive insights when viewing the question of children and AI through the lens of feminist care ethics, which emphasizes the moral importance of relationships and the responsibilities that emerge from them. A recognition of children’s rights to privacy or freedom of expression may guide the development of laws about children’s tech usage, but it doesn’t fully address the ways in which technology can alter a child’s concrete relationships, which play a vital role in shaping their lives.
The presentation will proceed in three parts. First, I will review prominent philosophical conceptions of the child and child agency. Second, I will explain how an ethics of care can reimagine children’s agency in the AI space to leverage the possibility for responsive relationships. Finally, I will consider how these insights inform contemporary applications of AI systems in children’s education.