Intergenerational dialogue – YOUthDIG Messages

Intergenerational Dialogue at EuroDIG Highlights Youth Leadership in Internet Governance

At the EuroDIG event, an innovative session on intergenerational dialogue took place, moderated by Riccardo Nanni. This session was a platform for the exchange of ideas between the experienced veterans in Internet governance and the emerging youth voices. YouthDIG representatives, including Ceíra Casey Sergeant and Cătălin Donțu, presented their messages, which were the culmination of in-depth discussions and collaborative efforts among the youth participants.

The youth representatives addressed pressing issues related to artificial intelligence (AI), focusing on the inherent biases that mirror societal discrimination. They proposed the use of synthetic data and diverse focus groups to reduce these biases and called for more explicit legal frameworks to tackle them. Emphasising the significance of AI literacy, they suggested the implementation of a European-wide standardised programme to empower individuals through education.

The discussion also touched on the necessity for structured youth participation in policy-making, proposing increased funding and more regulated involvement to ensure their voices are heard. Inclusivity emerged as another central theme, with the youth advocating for policies to be written in accessible and comprehensible language, ensuring that everyone, regardless of technical background or abilities, is included.

Responding to the youth messages, Tomas Lamanauskas from the ITU and Xianhong Hu from UNESCO offered their insights. Lamanauskas highlighted the growing importance of integrating human rights into technology and standards development, noting the shift towards technologists becoming more involved in human rights discussions. He also pointed out the need for interdisciplinary collaboration and inclusivity in AI development, particularly to address gender biases. Lamanauskas further emphasised the necessity of capacity building for policymakers to effectively regulate technology.

Xianhong Hu resonated with the youth’s concerns, particularly regarding gender equality in STEM and AI. She called for increased opportunities for women and girls in these fields and stressed the need for awareness and education to address the challenges posed by AI. Hu also suggested that the youth are not just participants but leaders capable of driving change and advocated for their active engagement in policy-making.

During the interactive Q&A session, audience members raised additional points, including the impact of AI on women’s day-to-day lives, the importance of engaging youth in policy discussions, and the challenges of working in interdisciplinary teams. One question specifically directed to UNESCO inquired about the organisation’s forthcoming gender equality reports and whether AI would be a focal point, considering its impact on women.

The session concluded with a strong endorsement of youth leadership in shaping the future of digital policy and governance. The youth brought innovative solutions and fresh perspectives to the table, and their contributions were not only heard but also valued by the senior participants. The intergenerational dialogue at EuroDIG demonstrated the potential for collaborative efforts across generations to address the multifaceted challenges of Internet governance.

Moderator:
And I think without further ado, we can hand over to our youth committee, Riccardo Nanni is moderating the next session and will invite the participants. A few words, it’s a new concept, the intergenerational dialogue, there’s always the discussion about we need to involve the voice of youth, yes, we do, and we want to do it right, so that’s why we want to have a discussion between the veterans in Internet governance and the newcomers. And our youth committee, former participants have prepared for that. Over to you, Riccardo.

Riccardo Nanni:
Thank you, Sandra. Can you all hear me? Okay, fantastic. So as Sandra anticipated, I’m Ricardo Nani from the EuroDIG program committee, and I’ll be moderating the first intergenerational dialogue, there’s going to be one each day, so I hope to see you so numerous also tomorrow and on Wednesday. The intergenerational dialogue is a new concept. It’s made in such a way that the youth participants to EuroDIG can ask questions and interact meaningfully with more senior and expert participants in the field of Internet governance. So it’s a new experiment, it’s the first EuroDIG event in which we implement it, so we look forward also to your feedback and suggestions, and I take the opportunity to thank, first of all, the program committee and the local host for believing in the intergenerational dialogue and helping us finding the key participants, and I’d also like to thank Nadia and Vlad who also contributed along with me to organizing the intergenerational dialogue. Before we start it, I’d like to leave the floor to the organizing team of YouthDIG to spend a few words about what it is and what they did. So in no particular order, I want to introduce João Pedro Martins, who’s also been doing a great job at the remote moderation, Verena Wingerter, and then Marten Porte and Pilar Rodriguez. The floor is yours.

Joao Pedro Martins:
Good afternoon, everyone. So I’ll take momentarily my eyes off the Zoom session for a bit and talk to you a little bit about what YouthDIG is, and then I’ll hand over to my colleagues. So YouthDIG is an annual pre-event to the EuroDIG. It brings together around 30 young people from across the continental Europe, from Georgia to Portugal, like myself, to Norway in the north, and of course our host country, Lithuania. These youth are carefully selected by the program, our team, which is part of, or is designed by alumni such ourselves. I joined in 2018 in Georgia, where I met Nadia, the coordinator, sitting at the back. And the primary goal is to continuously enhance this program, meeting the needs of the newcomers who want to actively participate in Internet Governance. During YouthDIG, what does it happen? Participants engage with already experienced policymakers, they explore relevant topics and raise important issues that they believe that should be tackled during EuroDIG. We focus on our program capacity building, of course, and making sure that young people are able to express their ideas effectively. So summarizing and handing over, we are trying to create a platform, a successful platform year after year, and of course you’ll hear from them afterwards, and hopefully also enjoy in the background this year was no exception. Thank you.

Marten Porte:
Thank you. Does this work? Yes. So as the organizing team, we tried to create a diverse program with multiple goals. We of course wanted the participants to gain enough knowledge that would help them participate fully in EuroDIG. So that means having a grasp on all the issues that are playing at the moment and that are being discussed. So we’ve had sessions on topics like conflicts in the digital age, the rising use and the actual workings of AI, disinformation on social media. So we really tried to cover the widest array of topics that we could in the Internet Governance space. And we also wanted to give them an idea of how the process works and the whole setup of EuroDIG. So what is multi-stakeholder governance, what different models of Internet Governance do we have, and what are their benefits and their downsides, but also where is Internet Governance headed in the future. On top of that, we also aimed to introduce them to all the different communities that are active in the multi-stakeholder framework. So we had a wide range of speakers from associate professor from the Kaunas University actually. We had an ICANN board member. We had the CEO of the city of Vilnius. We had a council member of RTT as well. And also members of the technical community as speakers. We also actually went outside of our conference room for a bit for a session where we were welcomed by the department from the city of Vilnius that monitors a number of drones that are circling above the city at all times for use cases such as finding trash that is not supposed to be next to the bin or false parking. So that opened the participants up to a lot of interesting insight and also a lot of questions on how it works and how perhaps it should work. And of course, a part of the program was for the EuroDIG drafting the YouthDIG messages that my colleague will talk about.

Riccardo Nanni:
Thanks, Marten.

Pilar Rodriguez:
So I’ll walk you a little bit over the process that we followed to draft the YouthDIG messages. And for this, we used something called the disintegration method that fosters interaction between the participants and actually making sure that everyone is being heard no matter if they’re a fast thinker or if they need more time to process things, it makes sure that everyone can put their point in the messages and that everyone is being heard. The process began almost a month ago. It was online. And even though we were meeting through webinars online, our YouthDIGers were so interactive with each other. They were sharing with us the topics that they found interesting. And I really appreciate that from them because it’s usually very difficult to have a real interaction online. And they really managed to get that feeling. So after we gathered the topics that they were interested in, we arrived here in Vilnius. And well, we divided them into groups depending on what they were passionate about and what they wanted to contribute most on. And in these groups were facilitated by Verena, myself, Marten, and Izaan. So Izaan, stand up. Come on. Yeah. You’re getting an applause. So yeah. Thank you. So what? Yeah. I know you get the applause because you facilitate two groups. So you get the applause. So these groups, I actually I think we’re all really just proud of them because I think I can speak for all of us on thanking you how respectful you were of each other, how accepting you were of comments from other groups, of comments from other people coming from outside and also inside your group, listening to everyone, making sure everyone was being heard. Because the groups were self-organized. We were just helping them with drafting on boards and things. They self-organized themselves. And it worked really well. You followed so well the process. And I think that we really thank you for being so respectful and listening to everyone, making sure all points are being included in the messages that we will present later. So thank you, youth diggers.

Verena Wingerter:
Yeah. And the goal of youth dig is not only to learn about all these wonderful topics and draft the youth dig messages, but also to get to know each other, form a network and learn from each other. And that happens naturally during any session. But it also specifically happens at the socials afterwards. And we had some great socials, which you can maybe hear on my voice. We want to thank again the host country, because on the first night, we were invited to learn some Lithuanian folklore songs and also dances while enjoying traditional food. I have not known that there were so many different ways of very deliciously cooking potato. And I’m very thankful for the experience. On the second night, we had a scavenger hunt, where we sent our youth dig participants from Vilnius with little riddles to solve, little challenges. Some of the photos we had in here, where they found churches or arts or other type of interesting things here in Vilnius. And they had a great time doing that. And then for the last night, we had a little beer and pizza night, because, well, youth dig messages are actually very exhausting to draft. But these were just the official socials. And as always, they’re the after social socials. And here, we actually got to know our group so well, because who would have known that youth dig participants are actually also amazing musicians that can play any song you put in front of them on the piano. Last year, we had karaoke sessions in an actual karaoke bar. This year, we didn’t need the karaoke bar. We just needed a piano, and the karaoke was happening either way. We also enjoyed discussions about how we could maybe raise some additional funds for youth dig by promoting and selling great shirts, or how universal, yeah, how reality works. All these wonderful topics that come up when you talk to each other. What is truth? What is objectivity? How does liberalism work, and what are the downfalls of capitalism? But another thing, and the last thing I’m going to mention for our socials is, of course, it’s the Euro Cup. And so we also enjoyed watching the games, watching certain teams win, being sad that other teams lost. And yeah, we invite you to also come along, approach us if you want to get to know the youth dig participants. And with that, I want to thank you all for the attention, and hand over back to Riccardo. Thank you.

Riccardo Nanni:
Thank you. So thanks to the Youth Dig Org team for their introduction. Now as anticipated, today’s intergenerational dialogue is going to be about youth dig participants presenting their messages and discussing them with senior experienced participants in internet governance. So I’d like to invite two youth dig representatives, Cătălin Donțu and Ceíra Casey Sergeant. Please join us on the stage. And they will interact with our- Thank you. They will interact with our distinguished key participants from the United Nations ecosystem, Tomas Lamanauskas from the ITU, and Xianhong Hu from UNESCO. Thank you, Thomas and Xianhong for joining us today. And thanks to Katalin and Kira for volunteering to present the youth dig messages. So a few house rules, as you remember, we have three minutes for each remark. Without further ado, I’d like to ask Katalin and Kira to share with us their impression and the most important bits of the youth dig messages.

Ceíra Casey Sergeant:
Okay. Can you- Is that on? Yeah. Yeah, I’m Ceíra. I’ll dive straight into it. So yeah, we, as me and my fellow youth diggers have been talking a lot about policy positions and propositions on AI and human rights. We talked a lot about the discrimination in AI going on, and that’s only set to increase. So yeah, problems with inherent bias in data, as with all of the digital world, it reflects the natural biases and discrimination in society in general. So we talked about things like using synesthetic data in a transparent way, using focus groups with diverse participants to help reduce this bias, as well as more legal clarification on these issues. With bias in policy makers as well, we talked about how the overuse of techno-solutionism and how disciplinary working, as previously mentioned, really helps to combat this. So yeah, we did propose having a dedicated body for this kind of thing. So yeah, also using education to empower people and advocate for more AI literacy. The other option project we talked about was the intersectionality and accessibility, and talked about how representation is often quite an overlooked issue, but in my personal opinion is a much needed resource that we do have. I think also we talked about having a requirement for youth participation in these discussions, having it more regulated to make sure that this does continue. An increase of funding would probably be helpful for this, as with lots of things. And again, representation. The other thing we talked about was in education, formal and informal settings, having a program. We proposed a program that would help to standardize this across Europe. Again, multidisciplinary, a collaborative way of creating this program. And finally, we talked about inclusivity, and inclusivity starts with language. We really wanted to help regulate this as a policy and make sure that there’s not an overuse of technical jargon that’s accessible and comprehensible to everybody, and in an intercultural way as well. I think that’s crucial, using things like LLMs in many different languages to make it most accessible, and potentially using local universities. We’ve got lots of ideas about this. And yeah, standards to make sure that all content is accessible, and people with hearing or visual loss as well, and making sure that this is something that’s written down and followed to make sure that nobody is left behind. So yeah, I’ll pass on to the next part.

Cătălin Donțu:
Thank you, Ceíra. So I’m Cătălin, and I would like to start by maybe saying that data shouldn’t be subject to socioeconomic status. We believe that privacy is a right, should be a right for everyone. One of the topics we discussed was the fact that when we talk about the current information landscape, we see very dark patterns being manifested. tested. We see companies valuing profit over privacy, and we believe that change should start from our perspective. There needs to be a shift in perspective from data being used as an asset to consumers being able to customize platforms. So opt-out should be the default. We also discussed the dangers of biometric data being shared by states to private companies. We believe that biometric data is fundamental to privacy. And to pick on what my colleague Kira said, regarding AI, it’s very important to delimitate the different types of knowledge, different types of algorithms, because I’m a very technical person. I’m a student of mathematics and computing sciences for AI. And very often when we talk about AI, we tend to just talk about generative AI. But there’s so much more to it. We need to focus on various problem-solving techniques. We need to focus on the actual algorithms, which is why it’s crucial to have true interdisciplinarity when drafting policy. It’s crucial to have both humanities people and technical people. It’s crucial to have everyone, no matter whether they’re doing economics or global studies or engineering, have a voice in the policies that we draft. Maybe then we’ll be able to have more understandable and clearer language. And maybe on another very interesting point, I believe that the EU shouldn’t just take pride in being a regulator, but also take pride in being an innovator. I believe that with more funding and more collaboration with industry and academia, we can truly create an environment that fosters growth. Local communities should not be left behind. And local communities should be part of the new dawn of the AI revolution. And maybe as a sort of last point that I feel like is truly crucial for what we’re talking about, youth is not just an age. Youth is a state of mind. And I feel like it’s really important to acknowledge the opportunities that innovation has for everything we can and will do. It’s really important to acknowledge the importance of privacy, but also to acknowledge the importance of building and investing and creating. Thank you.

Riccardo Nanni:
Thank you, Ceíra, Cătălin, for your presentation. Now I’d like to ask Tomas and Xiaohong to bring in their first impressions on the youth messages.

Tomas Lamanauskas:
Thank you, Riccardo, if we can start. Thank you, Ricardo, and thank you, Ceira , Cătălin. And it’s indeed interesting to be here part of this intergenerational dialogue. For two years when I was running my campaign for ITU, I was told I’m too young for the position, and I’m very young. So it’s very interesting to be on the other side of the intergenerational dialogue now. So I think it just shows, back to Cătălin’s point, how the definition of youth is very relative. And I think we’re already judging by some participants in the room. You guys also are not the youngest ones by far. But indeed, just a few points, I think, from my point and our work. First of all, this link between human rights, technology, and standards. Because I think for the longest while, technologists said that human rights is not for them to deal with. And even some discussions today, if you go to standard bodies, even in Europe, actually, they would say, look, guys, this is not for us to think. We have lawyers. We have human rights experts. These guys will do it. I think that paradigm is shifting and changing. So we, for example, as a standardization body as well, we’re working now closely with the Office of High Commissioner of Human Rights in the soft way to integrate the thinking, or at least to expose technology people, into the human rights world. So at least to start appreciating what impacts of technology could be. It’s not an easy road, I would say. It’s sometimes easy to say, you guys need to know. It’s very different communities and different understanding that needs to be brought about. But I think this is a road, definitely, that needs to be traveled. Which brings me to the second piece is the small different stakeholders needing to be together. So we had this a few weeks ago, this AI for Good Summit. And we had this governance day. I really like this exchange at the table where we have a mix of technologists, and ministers, and others. And one minister of one country said to one pretty prominent CEO of one technology company. He said, look, you don’t have a clue what I’m doing, and I don’t have a clue what you’re doing. But if we get to resolve that, we actually need to have a clue. And we need to talk. And I think I really appreciate how detailed you want in these recommendations. Honestly, most of that is over my head. I can introduce you to people who would understand that. But I think the principle here is this conversation needs to start happening, as with these human rights people, technology people, policy people, to understand how we all can make this work. Because you can have a great technology solution, but there’s no policy path to implement it as well. Then inclusivity, which I think is also mentioned here, especially when we talk about bias. We still have, and studies show, that around 45% of AI models exhibit gender bias. And of course, we have huge biases when we talk between geographic regions and on others. Because a big part of that is the data sets that we use. So a big part of that, who is involved in the value chain of creation, who is actually developing that? And again, how the value chain is distributed around the world, between PhD-holding engineers in some parts of the world and data labellers in other parts of the world. There were now even articles how language that charge GPT users reflects the data label as language that they use. So I think we need to be conscious of that. And thank you for highlighting that. Then, of course, importance on standards. And I have to brag here. We just launched our cooperation on AI watermarking, content authenticity, and deepfake detection, where we’re bringing different standard organizations together to actually work on that. So again, to try to see what are the methods and how we can use already established principles to do that. So I think there’s definitely something there. And I think we identified that as a first area where standards need to focus when we talk about AI. And finally, capacitor building. So I think education spoke a lot. But I think we also realized capacitor building for policymakers is as important. Because even to sit at a table to discuss these things, you need to understand what you’re talking about. And a lot of times, we don’t. So I think that’s the three important pieces. And last and largest, we’re really involving voices from young people. So we’re trying as well in ITU. We’re not that great. Just statistics, only 2% of our staff is below 30. So it’s not great. But we’re doing that with a youth task force for the staff, youth advisory board for SG, for Secretary General, with a new young professionals program that we just launched, and selecting people with a pretty active internship program and others. Because these voices, that intergenerational dialogue needs to happen every day, not just in these opportunities. So hopefully, it’ll be useful. Thanks.

Xianhong Hu:
Thank you so much for inviting UNESCO. I do share the mixed feeling of my colleague, Tomas, that we are sitting here as an older generation. But we don’t feel that old. On the contrary, I feel our young generation, they are so mature. They are really giving so strong recommendations. The best solutions, actions I have ever heard from here. That’s why I thought that maybe it’s a time that we should stop talking about the youth engagement, but we should think about the youth leadership, and really recognize the role of youth as a catalyst for driving changes. And that’s why I appreciate today’s format. It’s so equal, so equal footing. And I really heard you. You are heard. Your strong recommendations are really well heard by all of us. And also, that’s why I like to contextualize some of your recommendation ideas in the work of UNESCO slightly. For example, on the inclusion, I think Thomas also mentioned. And also, I mean, don’t forget, really, at global level, I have put 2.7 billion people unconnected still. And also, two-thirds of them are women and girls. And in the current AI workforce, only 25% are being women and girls. So I think that’s a huge divide here. Never forget this. That can really lead to the next generation, a deeper knowledge and technology divide. And also, for those who are already connected, and I think a buzzword here, I heard that it’s meaningful connectivity, meaningful access. I also see that that’s why we, I fully agree with one of the recommendations from your message on to make the digital literacy a part of school curriculum. You did have that. I will reassure you that UNESCO is really your ally. We have been advocating for media information to information literacy, not to the digital literacy, to be a part of education, to be a part of school curriculum. That’s really definitely should be on the top agenda. And a third point, I’d like to share some takeaways from this morning’s session. You have been here, and UNESCO has convened two sessions on the measurement. I fully agree with what the Prime Minister of Lithuania just said about data. Data supports a quality in policymaking. And we have done some research on existing indicators to measure digital policy. Without evidence, I don’t think you can lead to any quality policymaking of a digital governance. But after reviewing 10 existing digital policy indicators, we found the use aspect is so much lacking in all the existing measurements. That’s a really substantial challenge we should tackle. I mean, not just talking use, I mean, cosmetically as engaging, but really to measure it, to extend use are really a part of crucial policymaking process. That’s a sense of having this multistakeholderism, having truth to be a part of acting leader in this process. And OK, lastly, I also want to go beyond the digital aspect from your message. Because this age of AI, it’s also so challenging. It’s making young people so vulnerable. On the other hand, to obtain opportunities for employment, we are hearing every day some jobs are being replaced by AI. You will be facing the new question we never faced as the older generation. They will ask you, what’s your value added compared to child LGBT? That’s a tough question. That’s why I think that we need to see a shift of paradigm for education, entire system. Education should be shifted to tackle this dynamic changes of workforce brought by the digital technology. Now we have AI. Then we have metaverse. Now we have quantum. We’re having so many more transformative new technology. Then we need to ensure that our education, a new generation will get the new types of whether they are training, vocational training, or scaling up different ways of way to enhance your capacity to make informed decisions when you choose a job or when you choose your education. So that’s something I’d like to add up to your recommendation. And maybe I stop here. I’m talking a bit too much. And I can add it later on. Thank you.

Riccardo Nanni:
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your remarks, Tomas and Xianhong.Ceíra, Cătălin, would you like to react?

Cătălin Donțu:
This is something one of my professors said. And it’s something that I think of very often. When we’re talking about innovation, we need to make sure that when we’re taking one step forward, we don’t take two steps back. I feel like very often when we’re talking of new technologies and of all of these new emerging big, sometimes very gimmicky concepts, we tend to have a solution before first identifying the problem. I feel like it’s really important to not just create for the sake of creating, but to truly think of the impact that is going to be had. I really like the point of the fact that we will be one of the first generations that will be asked not just what skills we bring to the table, but specifically how much the value added is. And I really think it’s very, very important that we are as clear as possible on the effects that new technologies are going to have, and that they’re not just going to be some sort of new gimmick that we don’t fully understand. Thank you.

Riccardo Nanni:
Thanks.

Ceíra Casey Sergeant:
Yeah, I’ve really liked what you said, especially in education. I think it’s really important, again, that we both stay away from, I’ve heard it mentioned before today, about this separate generational thing that we’re very different, that we can’t agree, or that we have very different concepts of what we want for the future of the digital world. I think really, yeah, I think it’s important to recognize that technology is a part of our lives, yes, and it has lots of different benefits, lots of different ways that we can innovate and make changes. But that it is in our hands, it’s something that we can create. I think there’s a lot of scaremongering, a lot of fear sometimes, especially with AI and this sort of innovation that does feel very extreme. I think the motif came up a lot when we were talking about the balance, balancing regulation versus innovation, balancing participation and making sure that everybody has a seat at the table. How do we navigate making sure that all views are covered whilst actually making real change and real benefit and getting somewhere, and not just collecting a load of data and then not knowing really what to do with it. Yeah, I think education and incorporating technology and the thoughts of what we want for the future into everyday life, because it does affect everybody, whether you’re connected or not. It’s changing the world, and yeah, it’s in our hands.

Cătălin Donțu:
Also, really important when we’re talking about education and interdisciplinarity, I feel like it’s really important to mention that most of the greatest researchers, the pioneers of AI, of economics, of game theory, and so on, weren’t just economists, weren’t just computer scientists, weren’t just philosophers. They studied many diverse things, and that’s how they ended up creating new things. I am very privileged to be able to say that inside my university we have various student associations on various technological concepts. But what I think is very much missing from the education discourse is this understanding that you don’t have to be one thing or the other when creating knowledge or when learning something. We have to learn to be more things. We have to learn to not limit ourselves in our knowledge. People that study psychology should be open to learning about mathematics. People that study computer science should be open to learning about philosophy. I genuinely think that the more walls we put on knowledge, the less impactful that knowledge is going to be. Me and some friends have recently thought of creating a new student association that would combine political science with computer science. We still don’t know how feasible that will be, but we are looking forward to having as many projects related to internet governance, digitalization, e-governance, because these are concepts that will define the future. So it’s really important that we start truly thinking, not necessarily of how youth is going to play it out, but how these concepts are going to define the society that we’re going to be living in, because they’re central to our existence, in a sense. And we need to truly start defining what they mean, not just to us young people, but even to. seniors, even to older people, to policy makers, because this is how society is going to look and regulation isn’t going to stop it, it’s just going to make it come slower. So it’s really important to balance it out and to acknowledge that change is going to come and we need to be as knowledgeable as possible. Thank you.

Xianhong Hu:
I really appreciate what you both have just said, that talking about building the resilience of a young generation facing these technological revolutions. I’m a quite incurable optimist. I agree totally that the technology is your ally, not your enemy, for the development. The newer generation is just getting more powerful with the AI, with the personalized education. I mean just to learn things faster, better, you have even better critical thinking since you are immersed in such a diverse information scope. So I would say that what beats you is not AI, but what beats you is the person who will use AI better. I think that’s really the key here. And another point I’d like to resonate is that actually there’s no such a thing that generational gap, because many challenges are the same for everyone. We talk about digital literacy, digital competence skills. Those parents, older generations, they are even worse. My 11-year-old daughter knows much better about my phone than I do, and they also value the crucial point of human rights such as privacy. They forbid me to post a picture on my social media. I do learn a lot from a young generation. It reminds me of a book in 1995 written by Nicola Ponte. He, I mean 20 years ago, has foreseen that digital technology has brought a new shift of the knowledge transfer in the traditional societies from older generation to young, but now it’s on the contrary. The young generations are standing in the forefront of the innovation of getting a new knowledge. They are so much more proficient in digital skills. That’s why we need to learn, actually, from our young generation. That’s really my message to you. Thank you.

Riccardo Nanni:
Thanks. Tomas, would you like to ask a question?

Tomas Lamanauskas:
I think, again, just a few things. I think Ceíra said that whether we want the same thing, and I think this whole concept, but I think inevitably those things that looked very far away or far apart are now becoming close. May was the 12th hottest month on the record in a row, and we kind of feel that. Actually, there’s some nice weather here. Hopefully, it’s not because of climate change, but maybe Lithuania will be growing champagne or having champagne in a few years. But I think the fact is that regretfully it comes also with the growth of negativities. Heat, floods, everything, scorching heat and floods and all that. It’s not something that will be in the distant future that our children will face. We are facing this now. The same with the technology. We are facing that technology development now. If you think about what was the stage of technology 20 years ago and what it is now, it’s sometimes difficult to imagine where we came from. From the basic thing that this thing didn’t exist 20 years ago to the actual AI development. It’s very difficult to imagine 20 years from here, and that’s not my children’s children. That’s still me. I think that future is coming much closer, and I think we need to appreciate that. The other thing is, indeed, there are a lot of challenges today among the disciplinary, and I think Kathleen said very well. I think it’s very difficult to figure out how to resolve things if you don’t learn from other disciplines, and innovation happens at the edge. When you merge engineering, law, policy, and humanities in one place, and that’s where it comes. I think we need to really figure out where that really sweet spot is. At the same time, when the knowledge is immense, how do we really, for each other, find that right spot and how we collaborate with each other? Of course, then the question is, again, this is back to our thinking of the youth, not youth. It’s like at different stages. Regretfully, we cannot prepare anymore for this thinking of, now I’m youth, then I’m adult, then I’m kind of… Because the change is so fast, you have to keep learning. There’s this famous book on 100-year life, which basically says we finished out this three-stage life, now it’s multi-stage life that keeps repeating. If I can brag, I did that. Every 10 years ago, I went back to university. Just because every 10 years, you have to upgrade your skills again. It’s not like you can feed yourself all that knowledge in one go, and then it will be survived for you to the end of the lifetime. That’s why I think that also makes clear that this dialogue, again, it’s not like a dialogue who’s someone who’s starting with someone who is now experienced, because we’re all kind of starting in some way, and I think it’s also good to train that muscle to remember that how it is to start, because if you forget to train that muscle, you’ll be very clearly, very quickly caught by some of the change which you’re totally unprepared for.

Riccardo Nanni:
Absolutely, thank you. Thank you all for your remarks. It was great to see that this conversation didn’t need much moderation. That’s the best part of conversation, because it was very natural and very smooth. Now, since EuroDIG is really about interaction between key speakers and the audience, are there any questions from the general public, or from the other YouthDIG participants, or from the other people in the audience? Yes, please. Do we still have that nice box that was going around this morning? Thanks.

Audience:
Thank you. I was never very good at PE. Thank you, especially for mentioning the issue of women, especially within tech and AI currently. I recently came over a paper that asked AI scientists how they would expect AI applications to reduce the amount of labor women are performing in the household, or humans are performing in the household, but statistically speaking, women. And what I found very interesting, that even though that household appliances make up the most of technology we use every day, we don’t consider them as tech, and we have not introduced them yet to AI models. And I think this is something very interesting when we’re talking about AI aspect and view on labor. We are talking about intellectual labor, we are not talking about physical labor, or time consuming labor, or caring emotional labor. My question, especially regarding UNESCO, and my question here would be, in the forthcoming gender equality reports, will AI be a center point? And will not only the aspects of AI who works in AI, who develops AI be a center point, but also how AI affects women in their day to day lives, because those differ from men? My name is Celia Unger, I study at the Royal University of Bochum, and I’m here with Youth Tech.

Riccardo Nanni:
Thank you. So we have… I need to be mindful of the time, we have five minutes to go, so if there’s another question, maybe we can pick this up. I see there’s Wout, I think, on the back, and then we can maybe pick three, and pick three questions in total, and then go to the answers. Thank you.

Audience:
Okay. Wout and Atris, I’m here on behalf of the Dynamic Coalition on Internet Standards, et cetera, but that’s not relevant. Three years ago, at the IGF in Katowice, there was this excellent, excellent presentations from the… Not the youth, yeah, the youth diggers there, and I thought they solved some major policy issues between them, and then you never hear from it again. So now we have this intergenerational dialogue, how does the UNESCO and Youth Thomas in the ITU… Are you going to invite these youngsters to discuss policy with you? Because that may solve some… Yeah, give some terrible new insights to… Great new insights to actually things that you’re struggling with for years, perhaps. So how does it continue?

Riccardo Nanni:
Okay, thank you. A third question, very quickly, and then we go to the final remarks. I see there’s a hand raised down there. I think she raised her hand first, but it’s the first person I saw. Thanks.

Audience:
Hi, thank you very much for the floor. My name is Emilia Zalewska-Czajcińska. I am from Poland, from the National Research Institute, NASK. And first of all, I wanted to congratulate you on your messages. I think you captured excellent points, and it’s always amazed me how young people can quickly come up with such an insightful and such thought-provoking points. So huge congrats on that. And I would like to highlight the thread that appeared here of that we, nowadays, we have to talk, if we make policy, we have to talk with people from different specializations, from psychology, from law, mathematics, informatics, many other specializations. I think it is something very important that is still not discussed enough, especially that actually, during our education, we are not taught to do so. Like, nobody tells us during our studies, when we study at one faculty, like, that we, for example, if we study informatics, well, we should become interested in law. This is something that doesn’t appear, and it is also something difficult while we start working, because after that, we work with different people. For example, we work in IT, and then we also have to talk with people from law, from law, with lawyers, and there’s where the problem become to appear, because we don’t speak the same language. So thank you very much for mentioning it here, and excuse me for a little self-advertising, but on Wednesday, we would have a session on this topic, how to develop digital skills, how to learn, how we can teach people to actually talk with people from different specializations, how to work in interdisciplinary teams, and I would like to especially invite you, Diggers, because it would be all about sharing experiences about the debate, what could be done better, and what was your experience, what was our experience, because I still consider myself young. Thank you.

Riccardo Nanni:
Thank you. Now back to the floor for a very quick remark, starting from Xian Hong, since she had the directed question to UNESCO, and then we go that way.

Xianhong Hu:
Thank you. Thank you again for all the questions, particularly the one from our young lady here. I could talk about it for an hour, but let’s be brief. First of all, for UNESCO, gender equality is fundamentally our global priority. In the first Global Ethical Framework for AI we have endorsed in 2021, you can see gender equality clearly, explicitly there. It’s really mainstream to every other principles as well. And second, I’d like to signal that not only on the workforce of digital industry AI, but also look at the root cause. I mean, you look at education in the university, UNESCO recently launched a report on the women students in the STEM education, you see there’s such a gap. We just have too few girls to study STEM in university, which didn’t prepare them to be able to tackle the work of AI. And thirdly, I also want to talk about the existing challenge of AI development on the gender issue, because AI as a new technology, it wouldn’t automatically correct those traditionally embedded bias against women at all, if we don’t put in any human interventions. Basically the data sets derived from traditional gender biased data would continue to train the algorithm to come out with the output, which are equally, even more biased than the offline world. We had a launched report on this gender biased AI on our website, you can also have a look. And lastly, I think on the gender issue that we really need more awareness. I mean, it’s an issue for both global north and the global south. Again, we don’t have a gap on here, we do see the gender divide is getting deeper somehow with the fast development of digital technology. I do call for the more girl power. I’m so happy to see our young girls so visible, so proactive in this use, and also you’re a digger. I call for the women and the ladies and the girls leadership as well, because in my work I also connected with many national policy makers of digital policy governance. Very often you see really all males on the table. You see, even to do a research, I used to manage internet university research among more than 40 countries. Even to identify a researcher, to work on it, it’s very difficult to find a woman, a lady. So I really encourage our girls and women, also our gentlemen, friends to support your daughter to really to go for STEM, to really work on the digital issues. That’s really crucial for the future. Thank you. Lastly, I think the gentleman also mentioned that how UNESCO engages youth. We do engage with youth, not only formally. For example, at each general conference of UNESCO, we will organize a youth forum to engage with the youth people from other countries.

Riccardo Nanni:
Thank you. In the interest of time, since we’re already over time, since we had one remark from the key speakers, if it’s okay for Tomas, I would just leave one remark for the youth diggers, and then we can wrap up. Thank you.

Cătălin Donțu:
I would like to tackle the third question. I feel like it very much begins from universities. So when someone chooses a specialization in university, it’s usually just that. But I find it really important, and it’s something my university does as well, is you have, even if you’re studying computer science, for example, you have courses on IT law, you have courses on accounting. So sometimes, even though it’s maybe not as shiny, and I keep using that word, but gimmicky, it’s really important to learn the applications and the various disciplines as well. Maybe also related to the first question, also related to the gimmicks of new technology, I actually have one friend, one classmate, Kevin Shakiri. He currently, as part of his work in Bonsai, is working on a very, very interesting sort of household robot that will help users with finding recipes and cooking. So while there’s technology we don’t really think about, that technology will very much impact our lives as well. And I feel like that’s more or less all the points I wanted to tackle. So thank you for your questions.

Riccardo Nanni:
Thank you all. Thank you for your attention. Thanks to all the participants.

Ceíra Casey Sergeant:
Yeah, I’d just like to second what you said, definitely. And I think, yeah, the more diversity we have in discussions, the better. I think, yeah, as I said in what I said before, the more diversity we have, the better. And having multidisciplinary work isreally important. But I’ll shut up now.

Riccardo Nanni:
Thank you. Sorry really for cutting the chase. We’re already five minutes over time. Apologies for taking longer with the Q&A. That’s my bad on moderating. Flow back to Sandra and the organisation. Okay, thank you. Thanks a lot.