Former Google trust-and-safety chief Tom Siegel, joining Common Sense Media’s Youth AI Safety Institute, warned AI could harm children more than social media and called for independent youth-AI safety standards, age verification, and stronger safeguards.
The founder of Google’s trust and safety team this week called for a slowdown in AI development, warning the industry is repeating social-media-era mistakes that could cause even greater harm to children, Reuters reported from San Francisco.
“We find ourselves in a really terrible situation in terms of what AI is doing to kids,” Tom Siegel, formerly Google’s vice president of trust and safety, told Reuters. “The idea that the industry will figure it out by itself without outside help is unrealistic.”
Siegel announced Tuesday that he had joined Common Sense Media, the children’s online advocacy group, as first executive director of its Youth AI Safety Institute, launched in May to assess kids’ AI use. Anthropic and the OpenAI Foundation are among the institute’s backers. Siegel said he plans to develop independent standards to hold AI firms accountable, working with companies and third-party groups, modeled in part on car crash testing for publicly available AI tools.
He worked at Google from 2004 to 2019, then co-founded TrustLab before stepping aside as CEO earlier this month. Siegel said major AI companies are rolling out features to children without enough guardrails, citing risks from suicide and psychosis to cognitive offloading (leaning on AI in ways that can reduce critical thinking). Near-term steps he named include stronger age verification at Anthropic and OpenAI, and a Google toggle to turn off AI Overviews and AI Mode for search, similar to existing filters for sexually explicit content.
A Google spokesman said parents can turn off a child’s search access entirely and called AI Search features useful for learning. An OpenAI spokesperson said the company uses account and behavioral signals plus self-reported age to identify underage users and continuously improves those systems. Anthropic did not immediately respond.
This brief covers Siegel’s attributed warning and institute role. It is distinct from AI Tech Daily’s earlier coverage of a proposed EU Kids Act restricting under-15s.