Youth AI Safety Institute Named Executive Director
The nonprofit, backed by major AI labs, aims to create objective standards for assessing risks to youth mental health.
Updated on Sept. 23, 2026 in Artificial Intelligence
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Common Sense Media has appointed former Google veteran Tom Siagal as the inaugural executive director of its newly formed Youth AI Safety Institute. The organization intends to establish public standards for evaluating how artificial intelligence impacts young users.
Why it matters
Siagal argues that the technology sector will not adequately address safety concerns without external oversight. The initiative marks a formal move to standardize how developers evaluate and mitigate the specific mental health risks posed by AI models to minors.
The institute is backed by the OpenAI Foundation and Anthropic, both of which currently rely on behavioral analysis to identify users who fall below age requirements. These sponsors are now aligning with the institute to codify how such risk metrics should be objectively measured.
The players
Tom Siagal
The inaugural executive director of the Youth AI Safety Institute and a co-founder of the startup TrustLab who spent 15 years at Google.
Youth AI Safety Institute
An organization established by Common Sense Media to create objective public standards for assessing AI risks.
Common Sense Media
A non-profit organization that provides media ratings and advocacy for children and families, now focused on AI safety.
OpenAI Foundation
The philanthropic arm of the AI research lab that develops large language models and currently uses behavioral analysis for age verification.
Anthropic
An AI research company focused on developing steerable and safe AI models, serving as a sponsor for the new institute.
The details
The Youth AI Safety Institute plans to develop frameworks for assessing the risks that AI platforms pose to younger populations. This process focuses on creating objective, industry-wide standards that move beyond the internal behavioral analysis currently utilized by labs like OpenAI to enforce age restrictions. The effort is driven by the premise that developers require third-party oversight to ensure that safety features are effective and consistently applied.
Timeline
Tom Siagal worked at Google from 2004 to 2019.
Siagal discussed AI risks in a Reuters interview on September 22, 2026.
The Tech Race
The Youth AI Safety Institute's effort to create standards for minors mirrors the approach taken by the National Institute of Standards and Technology AI Risk Management Framework to guide broader corporate safety practices. This initiative represents a specialized expansion of industry-wide efforts to codify safety benchmarks.
The institute's work will eventually inform the safety guidelines and age-gating mechanisms used by popular AI products. Parents and users should watch for future public standards that will define what constitutes a secure and age-appropriate environment for minors online.
The takeaway
The move signifies an industry pivot toward externalizing safety standards rather than relying solely on internal labs. Watch for the institute's initial release of its assessment framework to see which metrics become the industry benchmark for protecting youth.
Further reading
For more on how research labs are navigating safety benchmarks, visit Artificial Intelligence.
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Do you believe AI poses a greater risk to children than social media platforms do?
