Obama was injured and possibly killed in an explosion!!! This is an example of fake news that happens on social media. It could be stopped in the future by new technologies such as AIs or monitoring social media platforms more. However, what exactly is real and what is fake?
How about we design AIs to separate false news from real news? Scientists have experimented on new technologies, one of which is called generative adversarial networks. There is a generator and a discriminator in this machine. The generator creates synthetic information and sees if the discriminator can separate them for testing. As foolproof as this sounds, AIs can’t get everything right so we can’t 100% depend on them.
What if we give the job of separating truth and lie to the government? For example, the government can be our main source of news and they’ll give us the information we need and want with supposedly no false news. This can be faulty though, as you might’ve heard of stories about the government trying to control the citizens and limit their freedom.
If the government can’t be responsible for this job, what if we just monitor or create an algorithm for all social media platforms to make sure no fake news is being shared? People want to have their privacy so monitoring the things they’re doing on the internet won’t be possible and algorithms created for this won’t be perfect either.
If it’s using technology, trusting the government, or monitoring social media, whether news is true or false isn’t something that can be distinct from each other easily. In the absence of a solution, it’s up to you to decide what news you want to believe in. Was the latest piece of news you read real…..or fake?