Can AI fight fake news?

The “fake news” phenomenon may have captured the imagination of Americans during the 2016 presidential election and subsequent investigations of Russia’s attempt to use Facebook’s fake news to direct elections to Donald Trump. there is.

The truth is that fake news and phone news have existed for some time and by many as a tool to spread propaganda and conspiracy theories prior to the 2016 elections. Websites, including InfoWars and Breitbart in particular, are spreading fake news in support of their agenda.

But since the election, it has become a political and social issue, and poor Facebook has become a poster child for websites that have failed this plan.

Recently, social media companies have acknowledged the mistake and tried to get things right with their subscribers. We are currently flagging phone news articles sent to Facebook members via the news feed. We are using AI to achieve this.

The company uses AI to identify words and phrases that could indicate that an article is actually fake. The data for this task is based on articles individually flagged by Facebook members as fake stories.

This technology currently uses four methods to find fake news. They include:

• Score the web page. Google was the first to use this technique. Use the facts to create a website score. Obviously, website scoring is an ongoing activity. Still, as Google does that, the technology has grown significantly.
• Weigh the facts. This method uses a natural language processing engine to identify the subject of the story. AI using other models will check to see if other sites are reporting the same facts.
• Predict reputation. This technique is based on AI using predictive analytics and machine learning, and predicts the reputation of a website by considering various features such as domain name and Alexa web rank.
• Discover sensational words. Fake news proponents used sensational headlines to attract potential viewers. This technique uses keyword analysis to detect and flag fake news headlines.

The actual detection of these types of articles by AI is a difficult endeavor. Of course, it also includes big data analysis, but it also has to do with the authenticity of the data. Identifying it actually involves determining the truth of the data. This can be done using the fact-assessment method. What if fake news articles appear on hundreds of websites at the same time? In these situations, using fact-based techniques, the AI ​​may determine that the story is legitimate. Perhaps it may be helpful to use a method of predicting reputation in combination with assessing facts, but it can still be problematic. For example, a reliable news source website that doesn’t take long to validate a news article may pick it up assuming it’s true.

Clearly, further development is needed to identify these articles using AI. Many organizations are involved in enhancing the capabilities of AI. One such facility involved is West Virginia University.

The Reed College of Media has worked with Benjamin M. Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources at West Virginia University to create a course focused on using AI to identify phone news articles.

Senior students taking electives in computer science work in teams to develop and implement their own AI programs and are also participating in this project.

Another group known as fake News challenge We’re also looking for ways for AI to fight fake news. A grassroots organization of more than 100 volunteers and 71 teams from academia and industry to tackle the issue of fake news. It is developing tools to help people identify and identify fake news articles.

As organizations work to enhance AI to find these stories, there are various tools available to hit them. These include:

• spike. Identify and predict breakouts and viral stories, and use big data to predict what drives engagement.

• Hoaxy is a tool that helps users identify fake news websites.

• Snoopey is a website that helps you identify news articles on the phone.

• CrowdTangle is a useful tool for monitoring social content.

• Meedan is a useful tool for checking breaking news online.

• Google Trends to monitor your search.

• La Decodes From Le Monde is a database of fake news and real news websites.

• Pheme is a tool that verifies the authenticity of user-generated online content.