AI-generated misinformation: 3 teachable skills to help address it
To my surprise, some asked ChatGPT about my biography.
- To my surprise, some asked ChatGPT about my biography.
- To overcome this threat, educators need to teach skills to function in a world with AI-generated misinformation.
Worsening the misinformation problem
- Generative AI stands to make our existing problems separating evidence-based information from misinformation and disinformation even more difficult than they already are.
- Text-based tools like ChatGPT can create convincing-sounding academic articles on a subject, complete with citations that can fool people without a background in the topic of the article.
New critical thinking applications needed
- This approach will likely serve less well in an age where AI can so easily spoof the very cues we look to in order to assess quality.
- While there are no easy answers to the problem of misinformation, I suggest that teaching these three key skills will better equip all of us to be more resilient in the face of these threats:
1. Lateral reading of texts
- Rather than reading a single article, blog or website deeply upon first glance, we need to prepare students with a new set of filtering skills often called lateral reading.
- In lateral reading, we ask students to search for cues before reading deeply.
- Doing this task well implies the need to prepare students to consider different types of research.
2. Research literacy
- This means teaching students about research quality, journal quality and different kinds of expertise.
- Thinking about research quality also means becoming familiar with things like sample sizes, methods and the scientific process of peer review and falsifiability.
Technological literacy
- We don’t think about who creates the technology and how biases of programmers play a role in what we see.
- Through these three skills: lateral reading, research literacy and technological literacy, we will be more resistant to misinformation of all kinds — and less susceptible to the new threat of AI-based misinformation.