Our early research led us to focus on the early years sector. Of Nesta’s three missions, we felt it held the most potential for impact, particularly in generating new content to use with children, analysing written information and acting as an easily accessible source of advice. We then conducted a deep dive to understand how generative AI might help to improve children’s outcomes and reduce inequality in the first years of their lives.

We identified multiple potential use cases for generative AI in early years. These include supporting teaching, easing the administrative burden and identifying new ways to engage a child.

Our findings were published in the journal Infant and Child Development.

We created three prototypes to help our experts reflect on the potential impact of this technology in the real world. These prototypes used large language models: AI that has been trained on huge amounts of data to generate high-quality text.

The prototypes and their uses are outlined below and more detail can be found in our feature article.

• Prototype 1: Explain like I’m three, which responds to questions about complex concepts with age-appropriate explanations
• Prototype 2: Personalised activity generator, which creates ideas for activities that are tailored to a child’s interests, saving time and creative energy
• Prototype 3: Early-years parenting chatbot, which provides advice to caregivers on various topics about babies and toddlers with an accessible and conversational tone.

We hosted two AI residents to help us to identify use cases and set up both tools and ways of working based on generative AI. Their skills were vital to building the prototypes and we published a series of technical blogs so that other developers can use our processes to build their own chatbots for social good.

We carried out interviews with people working in the mission domains, such as early years practitioners, educational content creators and caregivers. We also scanned academic literature and news and spoke with generative AI experts to deepen our understanding of the emerging applications and risks of this technology.

If you'd like to know more about our work, get in touch.