The New Threats of Misinformation & Disinformation—and What We Can Do

Misinformation and disinformation will always be with us, but multiple technologies have made it possible to create and disseminate misleading and false information much more easily over the past two decades. The very recent emergence generative AI for text, images, and audio/video has greatly increased the ability to create more persuasive misinformation and disinformation, while emerging edge computing and augmented reality technologies present risks for hacking, creating, and spreading false information of more types, more widely. As AI, edge computing and communications networks, AR/VR, and other new technologies become ubiquitous, we need to ensure our new capabilities are deployed with security and safeguards built-in. This conversation with leaders in misinformation/disinformation and technologies will discuss the new threats to information security and quality and how they cab be misguided or even weaponized, and what we are, may, and need to do to protect against these threats.