IU receives $7.5M grant to study impact of AI-driven misinformation
Subscriber Benefit
As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe Now
Indiana University researchers will lead a team of experts in examining how to guard against online misinformation enabled by artificial intelligence.
The initiative is funded under a $7.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Defense’s Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative. Six IU researchers will join researchers from Boston University, Stanford University and University of California, Berkeley in the effort.
“The deluge of misinformation and radicalizing messages poses significant societal threat,” said lead investigator Yong-Yeol Ahn, a professor in the IU Luddy School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering in Bloomington. “Now, with AI, you’re introducing the potential ability to mine data about individual people and quickly generate targeted messages that appeal to them—applying big data to individuals—which could cause even greater disruptions than we’ve already experienced.”
The team will examine the interplay between AI, social media and online misinformation, the university said in a news release, and its findings could help counter radicalization and foreign influence on election campaigns.
A key aspect of the research will examine how a concept called “resonance” influences how receptive people are to certain messages. People can be strongly influenced by material that resonates with them through emotional content or narrative framing, the university said, and AI can rapidly generate text, images or videos on an individual level.
“This is a basic science project; everything we’re doing is completely open to the public,” Ahn said. “But it’s also got a lot of potential applications, not only to understanding the role of AI on misinformation and disinformation campaigns, such as foreign influence on elections, but also topics such as how can you foster trust in AI, similar to a pilot’s faith in the reliability of AI navigation systems. There are a lot of important questions about AI that hinge on our understanding of its intersection with fundamental psychological theories.”
The five-year research effort will unite experts across a range of disciplines, including psychology and cognitive science; communications; folklore and storytelling; artificial intelligence and natural language processing; complex systems and network science; and neurophysiology.
The other principal investigators involved in the project from IU are assistant professor Jisun An, professor Alessandro Flammini, assistant professor Gregory Lewis and professor Filippo Menczer, all of the Luddy School in Bloomington. Haewoon Kwak, associate professor at the Luddy School, will serve as senior personnel.