Discussions about artificial intelligence and young people often focus on risks, restrictions and the need for protection. While these questions remain essential, they represent only one side of the relationship between youth and emerging technologies. A recent event in Italy offered a more optimistic perspective: one in which young people were not treated merely as users of artificial intelligence, but as designers, researchers and active contributors to technological innovation.
From 28 to 30 April 2026, Rome hosted the nineteenth edition of RomeCup, an event promoted by Fondazione Mondo Digitale and organised in collaboration with Sapienza University of Rome. Bringing together schools, universities, research centres, companies and institutions, the event created a shared space in which technological development could be explored through education, experimentation and dialogue.
The title of the 2026 edition, “What’s Next? Intelligences and Talents in Dialogue: Converging Technologies and Shared Governance,” reflected an ambition that went well beyond showcasing new technologies. At the centre of the programme was the concept of augmented intelligence: an approach in which artificial intelligence and robotics are developed to enhance human capacities and contribute to inclusive, sustainable and human-centred progress.
This perspective is particularly significant for YouthGovAI because it frames AI governance not solely as a matter for legislators, companies or technical experts. Governance also takes place when young people are given the knowledge, resources and opportunities needed to examine technologies critically, influence their development and propose alternative ways of using them.
Learning through collaborative innovation
One of the most distinctive aspects of RomeCup 2026 was the collaboration between secondary schools and universities.
Students from 27 schools worked with 12 Italian universities to develop functioning prototypes in response to concrete social and environmental challenges. Supported by teachers and university tutors, the participants applied project-design methods, problem solving, teamwork and technical skills to transform emerging technologies into practical solutions.
The challenges covered a remarkably broad range of fields. Through initiatives such as AgroBOT, students explored the use of robotics in sustainable agriculture and the responsible management of water and crops. NonniBOT focused on technologies designed to support the autonomy, safety and quality of life of older people, while MareBOT addressed the protection and monitoring of marine and coastal environments.
Other categories examined collaborative robotics, autonomous vehicles, intelligent road systems, drones and AI-supported navigation. The projects were evaluated not only according to their technical qualities, but also on the basis of originality, sustainability, feasibility and social impact.
This combination is important. It communicates to young participants that technological innovation cannot be assessed only by asking whether something can be built. It must also involve questions about whom a technology serves, which needs it addresses, what effects it may produce and whether it contributes to the wellbeing of individuals and communities.
Hack4SocialAI and technology for social impact
The event also hosted Hack4SocialAI, a national challenge involving finalist teams composed of secondary-school and university students from Northern and Central Italy.
The young participants were placed in mixed teams alongside professionals and start-up representatives and invited to improve projects addressing four central themes: health, inclusion, educational poverty and sustainability. Through brainstorming sessions, peer evaluation, presentations and stress tests, participants were encouraged to examine the strengths and weaknesses of their proposals and develop them collaboratively.
The structure of the challenge is itself relevant from a governance perspective. Students did not simply receive expert opinions at the end of the process. They participated in the assessment of competing proposals, discussed projects with people from different professional and educational backgrounds, and defended their ideas before a multidisciplinary jury.
In this context, participation became more than attendance. Young people were asked to make decisions, respond to criticism, negotiate different perspectives and consider the social consequences of technological design. These are precisely the kinds of experiences that can help transform AI literacy from a technical competence into a form of active digital citizenship.
Bringing technology into dialogue with society
RomeCup 2026 also placed artificial intelligence and robotics in conversation with the human sciences. Alongside competitions and demonstrations, the programme addressed responsibility, awareness, gender stereotypes and online representation, while institutional and academic participants discussed the need to invest in younger generations as active contributors to technological change.
This interdisciplinary dimension helps counter the idea that decisions about artificial intelligence belong exclusively to engineers and computer scientists. The development of AI raises questions about rights, inclusion, education, work, identity and power. Understanding these implications requires contributions from educators, social researchers, institutions, communities and, crucially, young people themselves.
Events such as RomeCup can therefore provide more than opportunities for STEM education. They can become spaces in which technological imagination is connected to social responsibility and where younger generations are invited to consider not only what artificial intelligence might accomplish, but what kind of future it should help create.
From consultation to co-creation
The experience offers a valuable lesson for youth-centred AI governance. Meaningful participation does not arise simply from asking young people what they think about a technology after it has already been designed. It requires creating environments in which they can experiment, collaborate, question assumptions and contribute to the development of possible solutions.
Through its combination of school-university collaboration, mentoring, social-impact challenges and public discussion, RomeCup 2026 demonstrated how participation can be embedded in the innovation process itself.
This approach closely reflects the objectives of YouthGovAI. Young people need protection from the potential harms of artificial intelligence, but they also need opportunities to understand these systems and participate in shaping them. Experiences based on co-creation can help bridge the gap between these two dimensions.
When students design a robot to support older people, protect marine environments, improve agricultural sustainability or address educational poverty, they are not only learning technical skills. They are also confronting questions about needs, values, priorities and responsibility. In other words, they are already engaging with AI governance in practice.
RomeCup 2026 therefore offers an encouraging vision of the relationship between youth and artificial intelligence: one in which young people are recognised not simply as the future users of emerging technologies, but as present-day innovators and contributors to the decisions that will shape their development. If responsible artificial intelligence is to be genuinely inclusive and human-centred, young people must be given more than information about the future. They must be given meaningful opportunities to help build it.
