People want to believe

Human made: Misinformation is, in many cases, a fundamentally low-tech product, says the writer. — AFP

WITH the US presidential election a little more than a year away, candidates and voters are bracing themselves for an “explosion” of AI-generated misinformation. Adding to the fear is that many research programmes intended to study and counter misinformation, facing accusations of bias, are shutting down.

Given all this, I have a prediction: AI-generated misinformation will not be a major problem in the 2024 campaign. But that’s only because so many other forms of misinformation are already so rife.