AI both contributes to the spread of misinformation and offers some of the most effective methods to combat it

But first we need to understand the broader issues of the attention economy and the positive and negative roles that technology can play

The World Economic Forum recently labelled misinformation as the World’s most severe short term risk. AI is never far from this topic, for example Open AI recently claimed to have thwarted foreign influence operations by Russia, China and Iran that were being executed using their tools. Companies have every cause for concern about being targeted by similar means.

Less nefarious but related, is the increasing noise level in a world where content can easily be mass produced with little human effort. The more noise, the harder it is to determine signal, and the harder it is for your message to break out.

Filler content has always existed. There has always been a ratio of daytime-TV vs Game of Thrones level content, but there is valid concern that AI is exacerbating this problem. Indeed there is a much evidenced and increasingly reported conspiracy theory supporting this issue known as Dead Internet Theory.

A common mistake in analysis is lumping things together too closely. Let's break them down to understand what's really happening and where the solutions might lie.

AI is a complex mix of problem and solution

In many cases AI is an amazing technology in urgent need of a problem to solve. In the worst cases it is a solution that is only creating a bigger problem.

Creating useful products is all about being in love with the problem and not the solution. In my work with AI we try to frame the problem from a value standpoint - “How can we enable businesses to capture the value from this new technology?”

Let’s start by understanding what that value looks like.

In my previous writing I suggested the most urgent problem AI can solve (and hence the biggest value it can add) is the issue of human overload:

The critical aspect is not just time in itself, but the opportunity cost of that time and the ability AI gives us to focus on bigger things:

This “better audience impression” is essential in a communications environment governed by attention economics: The Internet and social media changed our world from one characterized by content scarcity to a one dominated by attention scarcity. Where content was once limited by the number of pages in a publication and then later limited by the capacity of professional content producers, in the social media world content is effectively limitless.

AI reduces content scarcity further still, creating even more noise and more distraction. The more this happens the more attention is at a premium.

Attention is a hard problem to solve, which is why the real value proposition of AI - giving back human capacity to invest more into the bigger questions of audience and strategy and invest more time in researching and understanding subject matter in detail - is so important to embrace.

While it is a hard problem to solve, attention is the problem to solve since ultimately the only real answer to more misinformation is more good information. Furthermore, in a world of content abundance AI gives us a new power to actually make sense of abundance by giving us advanced tools and systems to spot misinformation in the first place, enabling a more comprehensive anti-misinformation approach.

The point worth making once again is that while AI is commonly seen mainly as an efficiency tool and a creator of average (or junk) content, in actual fact the opposite is also true: AI is a quality enabler.

AI is introducing a content arms race

Any successful technology reduces the friction involved in achieving something. The problem is that it reduces the friction of doing bad things is the same way as it does for good things. Think email - an amazingly productive communication medium on the one hand, plagued by spam and misuse (not always intentional) on the other.

Furthermore, bad actors have fewer barriers or disincentives against experimentation and early adoption and are more prone towards action.

Recognizing this duality is strategically critical. While AI is already demonstrating its potential for misuse, AI’s empowering ability to help us raise our content game gives us the best chance of addressing misinformation - providing that the good guys get invested in AI as quickly or more quickly than the bad guys.

The bottom line is that we shouldn’t and can’t wait.

When it comes to analysis my aim is not always to be right, but to be less wrong. So please challenge me - I’d really like any feedback or alternative viewpoints you may have.

My goal for this newsletter is to create dialogue and collective problem solving by leveraging the dozens of AI related conversations I have with communications and marketing leaders as part of my day-job. So please do share with any colleagues who may benefit from or contribute to this conversation. My hope is that together we can continue to evolve these ideas and understanding through future editions.

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Thanks,

Mark