COMMENT | Vacating the chamber of echoes

COMMENT | Since CERN launched its first website in 1991, accessing millions of news sites is practically instantaneous on our smartphones. But has it made us any smarter or shifted our worldviews?

Social media algorithms, which focus more on waggish engagements than informed dialogue, have, in fact, polarised our politics. We isolate ourselves in news silos and get caught up in a feedback loop that reinforces our partisan opinions of the world.

We gravitate to views we agree with, oblivious that deep fakes and AI-generated narratives are lurking online. AI chatbots are already producing texts that look like breaking news that appear in "content farms - low-quality websites run by anonymous sources that churn out posts to bring in advertising", according to a review by Bloomberg.

Content moderation technology

Content moderation technology (or 'fact-checking' as in journalism) still catches up with viral falsehoods that fan outrage and conspiracies. AI ethicists are reportedly concerned about fake news becoming real to social media users.

To quote Wired, a tech magazine...