Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

Tagmisinformation

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Google + AI Feature = Chaos

Google SGE is producing nonsensical word salads. Is this really supposed to replace traditional search engines?

“Even with access to all the information in the digital world, AI can still be very, very stupid,” writes Maggie Harrison at Futurism. She’s referencing Google’s AI search feature, Google SGE, that “doesn’t understand geography” or the alphabet. When Harrison and her peers noticed someone complain about a glitch in the AI search feature, which purported that there were no countries in Africa that started with the letter “K” (ahem, Kenya, anyone?) they decided to test it out for themselves. Sure enough, the verdict is in. Google’s AI doesn’t know how to parse out blatantly false information. Harrison writes, When asked to provide a list of “countries in North America that start with the letter M,” for instance, Google SGE Read More ›

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YouTube Suspends News Show for Reporting on Misinformation

The show's host has accused YouTube of failing to "distinguish between misinformation and reporting"

Last week, YouTube suspended a popular daily news show from The Hill for including in its reporting footage of former President Donald Trump repeating the claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him, a claim that violates YouTube’s policies on misinformation. The co-hosts of the show have criticized the suspension, arguing that the policy, as enforced, is a threat to journalism on YouTube. One of the co-hosts posted about it on Twitter: Robby Soave and Ryan Grim co-host Rising, a daily morning news show for The Hill, one of the country’s leading political newspapers. Last week, they discovered that their channel had been temporarily suspended based on two videos that the show posted that had violated YouTube’s policies. The Read More ›

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Fact Checkers Stifle Story on Government-Funded Crack Pipes

When official sources contradict each other, who has the authority to decide what is misinformation and what is not?

A Facebook fact-checking group censored a report released this week that the Biden Administration is providing grants that would fund the distribution of crack pipes to the addicted, labeling it as containing “partly false information” and burying any posts containing the report in users’ news feeds. The Washington Free Beacon reported on Monday that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is operating a $30 million grant program for harm reduction, a strategy to combat drug addiction that seeks “to reduce the negative personal and public health impacts of behavior associated with alcohol and other substance use.” Perhaps the best known harm reduction tactic has been the exchange or distribution of clean needles to the addicted. Now, it would Read More ›

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What Your News Feed Will Look Like If Big Tech Runs It

Reading Elkus’s essay, one wants to ask, “Who is the collective ‘we’ who are supposed to be out of control?”

In an essay at The New Atlantis, Adam Elkus, a graduate student in computational social science at George Mason University, reflects on a curious change in public panics in recent years: Pundits’ obsession with AI doom has given way to “primal fear of primates posting,” with demands that top government or Big Tech crack down on social media: Once upon a time — just a few years ago, actually — it was not uncommon to see headlines about prominent scientists, tech executives, and engineers warning portentously that the revolt of the robots was nigh. The mechanism varied, but the result was always the same: Uncontrollable machine self-improvement would one day overcome humanity. A dismal fate awaited us. We would be Read More ›

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Columbia Professor Wants Government to Regulate News Media

The journalism professor argued before a government regulatory committee that "an open market without regulation will always favor bad actors over good"

During a subcommittee hearing on misinformation, disinformation, and extremism in journalism, a Columbia University professor advocated for the regulation of news media to create “a more vibrant, truthful news environment.”  Emily Bell (pictured) is a professor of journalism at Columbia University, and founding director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism. Prior to her appointment at Columbia, she was an award-winning writer and editor at Guardian News and Media in London. She offered her comments at a February 24 hearing titled, “Fanning the Flames: Disinformation and Extremism in the Media”, hosted by the Subcommittee on Communications and Technology of the House’s Committee on Energy and Commerce. Bell testified as a witness. She sees a “policy role” for government to play in Read More ›

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Bingecast: Denise Simon on Russian Misinformation Tactics

What are Russia’s psychological strategies in warfare? How are they employing them today? And how should we respond? Robert J. Marks interviews Senior Research and Intelligence Analyst on Foreign and Domestic Policy, Denise Simon, to discuss the Russian use of artificial intelligence, deepfakes, and maskirovka in the context of psychological warfare. Show Notes 00:33 | Introducing Denise Simon, Senior Research Read More ›

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Denise Simon on Cyber Warfare and Misinformation

When one thinks of warfare, thoughts of killing people and breaking things come to mind. But there are also psychological aspects of war. Robert J. Marks and Denise Simon discuss the Gerasimov doctrine, cyber warfare, and misinformation. Show Notes 00:34 | Introducing Denise Simon, Senior Research / Intelligence Analyst for Foreign and Domestic Policy 01:24 | AI as part of Read More ›