It is Still Down to Humans to Fight Fake News

2019 is undoubtedly going to be a big year in AI. The discussion over fake news will continue too. Sean Gourley, CEO of machine intelligence company Primer, wrote in Wired that while progress in AI is being made, at the moment humans, not algorithms, need to lead the fight against fake news. I know from my own research into fake news how important a role bots play in the spread of disinformation. Unfortunately, the technology is not yet discerning enough to be relied upon to separate fact from fiction. AI has not been able to fight back. It may be able to one day, but until then, it is down to us humans.
One of the reasons that computational propaganda has been so successful is that the naïve, popularity-based filtering systems employed by today’s leading social networks have proven to be fragile and susceptible to targeted fake information attacks.To solve this problem, we will need to design algorithms that amplify our intelligence when we’re interacting together in large groups. The good news is that the latest research into such systems looks promising.