Here’s a smart look at the burgeoning role of AI in the fight against disinformation.
Principal analyst Mark Beccue in OMDIA’s AI practice spoke with Primer CEO Sean Gourley for an article called Can AI Fight Fake News?, published in AI Business on September 9, 2021.
Starting with a provocative quote about “truth” from George Orwell’s 1984, the article explores the current state of natural language processing (NLP) solutions to discern truth or untruth by analyzing massive amounts of data rapidly – far beyond the scope and scale of human ability.
Notable excerpts:
Is AI suited to help fight against misinformation and fake news, and if so, in what way?
According to Sean Gourley:
- For processing high volumes of text-based data at speed, AI is 2000x better than human analysis.
- But the challenge is defining misinformation – what is real and what is not real. Machines can’t get to absolute truth.
- AI can be leveraged to detect an active campaign to push out misinformation
- Organizations are interested in tools that can do that as an early warning system
Is fighting misinformation/fake news a monetization opportunity for companies such as yours?
Gourley replied:
- For us it certainly is. Our technology is being used today to detect emerging information warfare campaigns by analyzing where claims originate and how they are disseminated through the media.
- Primer with the U.S. military is building an AI platform that will be able to automatically identify and assess suspected disinformation. The solution will be used by the Air Force and Special Operations Command.
- The system continuously collects a massive amount of broad data. It looks for misinformation claims that have been made, and then identifies claim attribution – who are making these claims. Finally, it analyzes counterclaims.
- All of these elements collectively detect a potential issue which security analysts can then use much more quickly to strategize against threats.
- It’s very early days in the commercial space for misinformation use cases but monitoring meme stocks and stock manipulation makes sense. There is a lot at stake for the investment ecosystem to keep that clean.
As Beccue concludes, “the fight against fake news will take a suite of weapons.” Learn about Primer’s toolkit.
Read the full article here: Can AI Fight Fake News?
