AI is going to make misinformation worse

How to combat it in your conversations

The misinformation war is about to heat up.  We already have a “news” channel that is being sued by a voting machine company for lying to its audience about the 2020 election results. And we know that Russia had a team of people to provide misinformation in the 2016 election.

I’ve written a previous newsletter on this topic, which can be found here.

But now we have a new threat of misinformation.  There are lots of versions of artificial intelligence being developed. Wikipedia’s list (here) is pretty long.

These AI programs create two new types of misinformation. One comes from the fact that the natural language models themselves tend to make stuff up, and it is said that they hallucinate. They need to be factchecked.  The second danger is how can they be used, that people can use AI to deceive, even maliciously, to deliberately create fake images and sounds. One example is the fake image of the Pope in a puffer jacket. 

So, what can we do so that we don’t get fooled?  And how can we have conversations with people who might be being fooled?  

I think the answer can be found in a paraphrase of a quote from Walter Cronkite, we are ignorant if we rely on only one source.

If we see anything that surprises us, or that seems intended to make us upset, that is when our skepticism should kick in. That can especially found when they use keywords that are loaded. Those are times we should investigate and get information from other sources. Since it would be difficult to fact check everything, that is an easy way to figure out how focus our efforts. There are sources that do fact checking for you like Snopes and the podcast Decoding Fox News.

Another trigger for fact checking should be if the person or organization is acting like a “conflict entrepreneur”. Consider what are they getting out of saying outrageous things?  Are they trying to build an audience on TikTok or build ratings so they can make more money in advertising?  Are they trying to get you to buy a product, like Alex Jones was?

There are more suggestions in my old newsletter on how to deal with fake news here.

So, if you are in a conversation with someone who you think might be being fooled by AI, ask a question about the source of that information. You can use the Cronkite quote and ask them if they have checked it out with other sources. Tell them that when something sounds outrageous or is surprising or is said by someone who is trying to make money off of it, it is even more important to check it out with other sources.  But don’t say anything like that unless you yourself follow this practice and use multiple sources. Don’t be a hypocrite!