By bringing top minds from around the world to the University to teach and speak to the public, the UW Graduate School’s Office of Public Lectures takes big ideas and discoveries into the community and brings the community into scholarly life.

Jevin West, UW Associate Professor at the Information School and the co-founder of the Center for an Informed Public, will discuss new challenges and potential approaches to mitigate AI and highlight the gravity of addressing misinformation as a crucial societal challenge. He will emphasize the potential consequences of misinformation spread through AI and chatbots.

Abstract: Addressing misinformation is one of society’s grand challenges. In so doing, we might have a chance at the other grand challenges — preventing the next pandemic, preserving our planet, and protecting democracy. Humans, armed and amplified with social media, have been the primary producers of misinformation. This may be changing. Human-like chatbots and other forms of generative AI are and will contribute to this problem. It was a hard enough with humans; AI might make pre-2023 look like the good old days of mitigating misinformation. In this talk, I will address some of these new challenges and potential next steps. [AI did not generate this abstract.]