How Children Design and Reason about Trustworthy AI Chatbots
Quick summary
arXiv:2609.25244v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Children increasingly interact with AI chatbots, making trust calibration essential to AI literacy. Prior research has examined children's trust in AI mainly as users evaluating systems built by others, rather than as designers of their own chatbots. We developed a chatbot-building environment with adjustable trust-relevant traits (e.g., confidence, transparency, formality, assertiveness), rules, and persona. We conducted mixed-methods study with 115 learners (ages 8-18) who made 119 chatbots. We examined how children configured their c
Key takeaways
- arXiv:2609.25244v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Children increasingly interact with AI chatbots, making trust calibration essential to AI literacy.
- Prior research has examined children's trust in AI mainly as users evaluating systems built by others, rather than as designers of their own chatbots.
- We developed a chatbot-building environment with adjustable trust-relevant traits (e.g., confidence, transparency, formality, assertiveness), rules, and persona.
Why it matters
The value of this work lies as much in how it was tested as in the claim itself. Sample design, baselines, uncertainty and replication help separate a laboratory result from real-world impact.
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