arXiv:2608. 07902v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Youth increasingly turn to AI chatbots for social and emotional support, raising concerns about how these systems respond, especially in high-stakes situations.
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The study explores how children design AI chatbots and what they consider trustworthy. Using a custom chatbot-building environment, 115 learners aged 8‑18 created 119 chatbots and adjusted traits such as confidence, transparency, and formality. Findings show younger children equate trust with purpose‑fulfillment, while older children focus on transparent, calibrated design, and that students calibrate academic chatbots to be more formal and transparent than hobby ones.
The paper introduces Safety Nudges, a browser-based tool that displays lightweight, in situ flags when a conversational AI exhibits risky behavior such as hallucination or overconfidence. In a two‑week field study with 45 frequent chatbot users, participants reported that the nudges were useful, clear, and minimally disruptive, and most felt more aware of potential AI harms. However, increased awareness did not automatically translate into measurable changes in user behavior, underscoring the need for relevance, calibration, and user control in nudge design.
arXiv:2607. 25057v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: As conversational AI systems become increasingly integrated into daily life, their potential effects on user well-being require ongoing attention.
The paper evaluates the safety of conversational AI therapy bots for Generation Alpha, revealing that while these models understand 76‑82% of youth‑specific vocabulary, they correctly assess clinical risk only 64‑72% of the time, creating a significant vocabulary‑comprehension gap. Six failure patterns—such as sarcasm masking, minimization acceptance, and semantic drift—were identified, with compounded errors leading to a 94% miss rate when three or more patterns co‑occur. The authors estimate 146,880 missed crises annually and recommend mandatory human‑in‑the‑loop systems, quarterly youth‑specific validation, transparent performance disclosure, and regulatory oversight for youth‑facing mental health AI.
arXiv:2606. 29685v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: How can we evaluate whether frontier AI systems recognize child-safety risks before they escalate into explicit harm?
How can we evaluate whether frontier AI systems recognize child-safety risks before they escalate into explicit harm? Existing child safety evaluations focus on child sexual abuse material, yet many child-safety failures begin earlier: in model assistance that helps adults manipulate, impersonate, profile, or isolate minors, and in model responses that deepen children's emotional dependence on AI systems rather than redirecting them toward human support.