CFP: AI Ethics for Children and Adolescents (Special Issue in AI and Ethics)

This topical collection invites contributions that critically examine how central concepts and theories of AI ethics function when applied to children and adolescents, and where their limits become visible. While terms such as trust, explainability, informed consent, privacy, bias, justice, and well-being are well established in AI ethics, they are usually developed with adult users and decision-makers in view, which means that in contexts concerning children and adolescents they frequently rest on assumptions that do not hold or at least require critical examination.

Children and adolescents encounter AI systems under conditions of developing autonomy, heightened vulnerability, and dependence on others, which does not mean, however, that they are merely passive objects of protection – rather, they possess emerging forms of agency and a moral right to participation and development. Ethical analysis must therefore go beyond simple transfers of adult-centered frameworks and instead ask how AI ethics concepts must be specified, adapted, or fundamentally reconceived in developmentally appropriate and relational ways, whereby it is likely to emerge that such adaptations are not only relevant for children and adolescents but can also enrich the general debate.

We welcome submissions engaging in conceptual and normative analysis, as well as ethically informed empirical work. Contributions may focus on individual concepts, compare different ethical approaches, or explore concrete application contexts, with particular welcome given to work that makes explicit which assumptions about agency, competence, responsibility, or rationality are embedded in existing AI ethics frameworks and how these assumptions are challenged by childhood and adolescence. Also of interest are contributions addressing the question of how AI systems must be designed to meet the particular needs and rights of children and adolescents, or examining what governance structures are required to ensure child-sensitive AI.

Topics

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

• Trust and trustworthiness of AI systems in childhood and adolescence, including questions of overtrust, emotional attachment, and manipulative design strategies
• Explainability and transparency under conditions of developing cognitive capacities, whereby the danger of "explainability washing" must also be considered
• (Informed) consent, shared decision-making, and participation, including the question of how concepts such as transitional paternalism are to be evaluated ethically
• Privacy, surveillance, and data protection for children and adolescents, particularly in the context of digital phenotyping and other data-intensive applications
• Bias, discrimination, and justice affecting marginalized children, whereby intersectional perspectives should also be taken into account
• AI and the well-being of children and adolescents, including the question of socialization effects of AI
• Autonomy development, vulnerability, and dependence in AI-mediated environments, whereby the role of human relationships in an AI-permeated childhood must also be reflected upon
• Ethical governance and child-sensitive AI design, including the question of democratic participation of children and adolescents in decisions about their technological future.

Editors

Karoline Reinhardt is Professor of Applied Ethics with a focus on digitalization at the University of Passau. She has published several articles on trust and trustworthiness, explainability and diversity., among others, “ Trust and Trustworthiness” (AI & Ethics 2023) and “ XAI: On Explainability and the Obligation to Explain” (Digital Society 2025) as well as several other papers in AI Ethics.

Gottfried Schweiger is Senior Scientist at the University of Salzburg. His publications include the co-authored monograph “ What is a Good Childhood? A Philosophical Approach” (Palgrave Macmillan 2024) and the recent monograph “ Global Justice for Children” (Routledge 2025)  

Workshop

There is also an international workshop affiliated to this topical collection, taking place at the University of Salzburg on 22 & 23 October 2026. The call for papers and more information here: https://philevents.org/event/show/147969