DeepSummary
The podcast episode discusses the challenges of identifying misinformation and disinformation, particularly AI-generated audio and video content, in the context of the upcoming elections. Joan Donovan, a misinformation researcher and professor at Boston University, explains that AI technology has advanced to the point where it can realistically depict politicians saying or doing things that never happened.
Donovan highlights the recent example of an illegal robocall in New Hampshire that impersonated a politician's voice using AI, leading to amended regulations to include AI impersonation. She also mentions that there are now around a dozen companies offering AI impersonation as a service, making it increasingly difficult to distinguish real from fake content.
Donovan expresses skepticism about AI's ability to solve the misinformation problem, stating that human intelligence and fact-checking are still essential. She emphasizes the need for social media companies to do more to promote accurate information and address the true costs of misinformation cleanup for the journalism industry.
Key Episodes Takeaways
- AI technology has advanced to the point where it can realistically generate audio and video content depicting politicians saying or doing things they never did.
- There are now companies offering AI impersonation services, making it increasingly difficult to distinguish real from fake content.
- Regulations are being updated to address the illegal use of AI for impersonating politicians, such as in the case of the robocall in New Hampshire.
- Human intelligence and fact-checking are still essential, as AI systems trained on potentially biased data lack the ability to determine truth.
- Social media companies need to do more to promote accurate information and address the true costs of misinformation cleanup for the journalism industry.
- AI has the potential to amplify and spread disinformation during elections by iterating on and propagating false narratives without human intervention.
- Despite promises from tech companies, there is skepticism about their ability to effectively moderate AI-generated content and misinformation.
- The episode highlights the growing challenges and potential dangers of AI-generated misinformation and disinformation in the context of elections.
Top Episodes Quotes
- “When it comes to the technology itself. What it shows is that we can realistically depict any politician as having said or done something that never happened.“ by Joan Donovan
- “Even if it's just a prank.“ by Joan Donovan
- “Truth has always been a human process. We might invent instruments like the thermometer that will tell us when water boils, but when AI large language models are trained on a decade of Reddit data and the corpus of Wikipedia, it doesn't really have any parameters for the truth.“ by Joan Donovan
- “But we do know when it comes to elections and disinformation, that at this rate, you are not going to need a human being coming up with massive amounts of disinformation when you can have AI iterate on a particular pet theory or idea that one has that potentially could be disruptive to elections.“ by Joan Donovan
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Episode Information
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Marketplace
3/4/24
“Misinformation” and “disinformation” are often lumped together. They’re not the same, but they are very much connected. Say you hear that Christmas falls on Dec. 23 this year. If someone told you that thinking it was true, it’s considered misinformation. But when it’s spread with the intent to deceive, that’s disinformation, which can easily be amplified unwittingly by the folks in the first group. Audio and video generated by artificial intelligence is everywhere in this election season. So before you click Share, know that the tech used to create that convincing-but-often-false content is getting a lot better a lot faster than you might think. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with longtime misinformation researcher Joan Donovan, now a journalism professor at Boston University, to learn more.