Speaker: Sanjana Hattotuwa
Event details
21 September 2018, 11:30 – 13:30
Vischer AG Schützengasse 1
8001 Zürich
For further information or registration please contact: annahofmann@ict4peace.org
The term fake news increasingly frames our engagement with media and information. Whether over social media, broadcast or print, today’s news and information landscape is inextricably entwined with algorithms that promote or project frames customised for our personal preferences. An abundance of platforms has led to the tyranny of choice. We consume more but trust less. We are confronted with more but know less. Information is conflated with knowledge, sharing with engagement. This world is confusing and concerning for those who grew up with, and learnt to trust media of record. And yet, the present landscape is never going to return to what it was even a few years ago. The tenor and timbre of our democracy, increasingly, is pegged to the evolution of how we know, what we are made aware of. From the spectre of dark ads to opaque algorithms engineered by companies in the US who have no experience in, or till recently, even a remote interest in professional journalism define our world today. It asks of us upgrade our media literacy, and teach one another, as well as our children, skills around how to engage with this rapidly evolving landscape even we may not yet fully possess.
Artificial intelligence, and its companion, machine learning, enter this frame as both an instigator and saviour. On the one hand, to varying degrees, AI is responsible for news feed curation that has contributed to increasing socio-political divides, if not outright violence and even, in the case of Myanmar, genocide. On the other, both technologies hold the key to managing amounts of content production not humanely possible to sift through. The talk will explore some of the key developments, set out the challenges and outline some future scenarios around AI and fake news.
The presentation will offer no easy answers or solutions because there are none. How we engage with the challenges outlined, the speaker will argue, will increasingly define how we perceive the world around us, and what it is or becomes.
Download poster of presentation as a PDF here.
