In search of the truth

#38

The Story
How to make sure that AI isn't lying. 

How?
Artificial intelligence is changing the world. But does it bring more knowledge and accurate information into the world? Or primarily more misinformation? What is for sure is that AI has its flaws, including the ability to produce false information. To minimize misinformation, the Brazilian investigative news outlet Aos Fatos ("The Facts" in Portuguese) has taken a new approach: It integrated the OpenAI API with its existing journalism to produce a conversational Q&A chatbot. 

Explain. 
OpenAI API serves as a bridge to OpenAI's powerful machine learning models, allowing you to integrate cutting-edge AI capabilities into your projects with relative ease. So, the Brazil outlet paired the language learning model of OpenAI with its archives to give users a clear answer to their questions, including source lists of URLs. Its name is FátimaGPT. 

Why are they doing this?
"AI is taking the world by storm, and it's important for journalists to understand the ways it can be harmful and to try to educate the public on how bad actors may misuse AI," says Bruno Fávero, Aos Fatos’ director of innovation, at Nieman Lab, a journalism project. "I think it's also important for us to explore how it can be used to create tools that are useful for the public and that helps bring them reliable information."

How To Save Democracy
Whether AI advances humanity or plunges it into the abyss will depend on how we develop the technology and what purposes we use it for. The more people explore ways to use AI to find truth and enlightenment, the better the chances that societies can benefit from artificial intelligence. Since journalism is about finding truth and explaining things, I imagine it will play an essential role in developing and using AI for the better.