Young Voters Grill Candidates on AI, Disinformation, Net Zero

0:00It's April 1st, I'm Corey with the story, and this is Edinburgh News today. Local news powered by AI. Young voters aged 16 to 18 got a front row seat to grill seven Edinburgh candidates at a hustings event called The Future Speaks, right? Before the Holy Root Elections. Organized by James Gillespie's High School and the Edinburgh Futures Institute, it drew around 100 students from various schools. They hit hard on artificial intelligence, taking jobs, online disinformation, and hitting net zero goals. Candidates from all parties weighed in on AI's job shake up. Liberal Democrats pushed lifelong retraining through further education colleges and more apprenticeships over endless university degrees. SNP saw AI as a tool to harness infields like health care, while labor wanted a digital skills passport and business-tied training to build AI proof. Skill, disinformation had everyone fired up too. Green slammed online platforms as harmful, calling for them to be treated like publishers with accountability.

1:01Conservatives backed early digital literacy in classroom phone bands and independent stressed core school syllabus tweaks without over-regulating. On net zero, labor and lived-dim stuck to the 2045 target, reform called it an economic drag, greens demanded instant oil and gas, shut downs, and Tories eyed extending nuclear plans like Torness with small modular reactors. SNP's candidate shared personal climate stories from Fiji to underline the urgency. These sharp questions from the next generation show their tuned in and pushing politicians to level with them on real futures, debates like this keep, the fire lit for smarter policies