Prince Harry meets, funds youth groups advocating for social media and AI safety

Summary

Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, walked into the sunlight-lit hotel conference room in Brooklyn on Thursday to meet with a dozen youth leaders working in tech safety, policy, and innovation. The young adults chatted away at black circular tables, many unaware of his presence until he plopped down at a table and started talking with them. After making his way through various tables in the room, he took the stage to talk about the hopes and harms of this era of technological progress. “Thank God you guys exist, thank God you guys are here,” he said. He spoke about tech platforms having become more powerful than governments; that these social media spaces were created based on community, yet said there has been “no responsibility to ensure the safety of those online communities.” At one point, he said that there were people in power only incentivized by pure profit, rather than safety and well-being. “You have the knowledge and the skillset and the confidence and the bravery and the courage to be able to stand up to these things,” he said to the crowd. The event yesterday was hosted by the Responsible Tech Youth Power Fund (RTYPF), a grant initiative to support youth organizations working to shape the future of technology. The Duke’s Foundation, Archewell, which he co-founded with his wife, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, funded the second cohort of RTYPF grantees, alongside names like Pinterest and Melinda French Gates’ Pivotal Ventures. TechCrunch received exclusive access to the event to chat with attendees, average age of around 22, about their work amidst the rapidly changing technological landscape. The young people at the event were cautiously optimistic about the future of artificial intelligence, but worried about the impact social media was having on their livelihoods. Everything is moving so fast these days, they said, faster than the law can keep up. “It’s not that the youth are anti-technology,” said Lydia Burns, 27, who leads youth and community partnerships at t...