In an era where information is viewed as a very valuable commodity, Professor Christopher Charles is asserting that digital literacy is essential for individuals to be able to distinguish between what’s false and what’s accurate.
Charles, a professor of political and social psychology at The University of the West Indies, Mona, noted that there are many competing sources of information, making it difficult for the public to differentiate the truth from fake news.
The professor was delivering the keynote address on Thursday at the Artificial Intelligence for Information Access (AI4IA) Jamaica panel discussion on ‘Generative AI: Impact on Misinformation and Disinformation Exploring Jamaican Perspectives’.
He expressed the view that we are living in “the Information Age”, which he described to be a modern era characterised by the rapid and widespread dissemination of information that is also easily accessible through digital technologies. This, he added, has resulted in an “information overload”.
“We have so much information coming in, sometimes we can’t process all of it. That’s impossible, it’s cognitively impossible ... so what we select is in keeping with where we are in terms of our world view and our values,” Charles said.
Misinformation is defined as incorrect or misleading information that is not completely true or accurate. Disinformation, on the other hand, is false information that is deliberately and often covertly spread. It is also known as propaganda and is often used to influence public opinion or obscure the truth.
“In order to deal with this, we have to be digitally literate,” he said, defining digital literacy as the ability to access, manage, understand, integrate, communicate, evaluate and create information safely and appropriately through digital technologies.
“When we talk about digital literacy as a way to respond to misinformation and disinformation in the information age, there are some important questions. Are we digitally literate? What about our children, are they digitally literate? Is digital literacy being taught in our schools?” the professor asked.
Charles further stated that citizens need to be trained in how to use critical thinking skills, being functionally literate and “healthy sceptics”, to verify the information they absorb.
“There are some questions we can ask ourselves when we’re reading and navigating our technologies. Who produced this information? And why was this information produced? Where was it published? What does it really say? Who is it aimed at? What is it based on? Is there evidence for it or is this just someone’s opinion? Is it verifiable elsewhere?” Charles expressed.
These critical thinking skills, he noted, should be taught to children from the primary level, as they are already interacting with the technologies, and it must continue as they progress.
The professor shared that the benefits of artificial intelligence (AI) include, among other things, increased productivity, increased access and processing of information, and making videos, music, clone voices, and write computer codes. AI is also used in agriculture, manufacturing, transportation, to write books and papers, write lesson plans for teachers, and help diagnose illnesses.
Challenges associated with AI, however, include the retrieval of information that is not always accurate; facilitating academic cheating; and taking false information from the Internet, including fake news and inaccuracies. AI is also used to create fake videos, voices and images that mislead the public. And a major concern is that, as AI advances, human workers will be replaced.
The Jamaica panel discussion was held ahead of UNESCO’s AI4IA conference to be held on September 28. The global conference, which commemorates International Day for Universal Access to Information (IDUAI), is being hosted in collaboration with the College of Social Sciences and Humanities; University of Alberta, Canada; Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (Amii), and the Broadcasting Commission of Jamaica, all under the auspices of the UNESCO Cluster Office for the Caribbean and the UNESCO Regional Office for Southern Africa.
The global conference will explore a range of topics, such as making the risks and opportunities of AI more understandable to a wider cross-section of persons.