India needs human-centric AI to curb fake news

As social media giants fight to curb fake news ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, an Indian-origin tech junkie has stressed it is not enough as the nation needs better human-centric Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based solutions to combat the spread of misinformation.

For Lyric Jain, a 22-year-old Cambridge and MIT graduate, social media platforms and other stakeholders, including the government, may design solutions to fight fake news but there will be glitches, as is with the case with any technology.

"India needs to prepare better as the stakes are high. Facebook is taking the problem of fake news seriously but there are many other digital platforms that aren't working towards that direction," Jain told IANS.

Conceived by Jain, Logically has been developed by a diverse team of data scientists, coders, designers and journalists.

Adding a layer of credibility to the Internet to battle misinformation, the Logically platform acts as a real-time, user-friendly filter, ensuring users can quickly consume information that is fair, authentic, credible and trusted (FACT).

"News isn't just limited to media houses anymore. The idea is to create 'responsible sharing' among people," said Jain.

"Logically will analyse whether the information is fake or not, even if the information is being provided by a well-known journalist from a credible publication," he added.

When asked how the technology works, Jain replied: "It is a human-centric AI effort".

"We analyse the content or text, check the metadata that is being mined and see how information is being circulated across networks.

"We then combine these indicators and conclude whether the news is credible or not. Also, our human fact-checking team complies with the international fact-checking standards," Jain said, adding that it was the fake news and political interference debate around Brexit and the 2016 US Presidential elections that drove him to launch the Logically platform.

As the India elections inch closer, Jain said the platform will try its best to analyse the flow of information.

Logically taps deep learning algorithms and web graphs of millions of web sites from top publishers around the world to identify top quality sources for trending, quality news, per category, query, or article.

"Logically will look for information that is misleading, distorting or interfering with the elections," he added.

(Vivek Singh Chauhan can be contacted on vivek.c@ians.in)

--IANS

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