AI workshop @ EU-Council of Europe Youth Partnership's symposium in #Albania

How do we define #AI in youth work? How has #AI affected youth work practice in recent years? In June, I facilitated a workshop session EU-Council of Europe Youth Partnership's symposium in #Albania. We started our conversation with "I know nothing about AI" a finished with some great insights about how AI is affecting daily realities for those working in youth work.

As always, there was a lot of fear and negatives, but I was also surprised by the positive bits. Here are my early reflections:

👎 Some argued that AI (and digital tech in general) has led us to believe that digital solutions do a lot of work for or instead youth workers. That is why smaller teams and budget cuts can be justified. As one person said, "that there is more work, but fewer people".

👎 AI gets seems to be getting in the way of meaningful communication & interactions between young people and youth workers. It can lead to miscommunication and take away the meaning linked to offline interactions.

👎 AI might take over youth workers (e.g., chatbots). This is something I also learned from the youth workers in 2019 https://lnkd.in/eddbj_5V)

👍 AI has led to the creation of new communication and participation forms, making the youth work space more inclusive and cross-cultural.

👍 AI has made it easier to manage many admin-related tasks in youth work.

These are just some of my early thoughts. I'll make sure to post more analysis in the coming weeks. In the meantime, you can read a bit more about my critique of AI's role in youth work in the paper I co-wrote with Adina Marina (Călăfăteanu) Șerban, "Technology and the new power dynamics: limitations of digital youth work" https://lnkd.in/giaAKyVd OR you can listen to the podcast about the paper here: https://lnkd.in/gvHZbVhb