A report by National Taiwan University (NTU) showed that many Taiwanese trust generative artificial intelligence (AI) more than human-created data in a worrisome display of susceptibility to fake news.
More than 90 percent of Taiwanese reported exposure to disinformation, mostly coming from scammers, NTU professor Hung Chen-ling (洪貞玲) told a news conference on Friday, citing an ongoing long-term study that began in 2022.
Fact-checking has gained traction, with more than 70 percent of Taiwanese reported making use of fact-checking platforms, while the same percentage of Taiwanese expressed trust in their credibility, she said.
Photo: REUTERS
Between 80 percent and 90 percent of Taiwanese support anti-disinformation laws that target social media platforms, according to the study, suggesting widespread frustration over fraudsters, Hung said.
In response to the popularity of generative AI, the survey this year included AI-related questions for the first time, she said.
Seventy percent of respondents have consumed content generated by AI, and the public appeared mostly unaware of AI’s potential for falsifying and misreporting data, she said.
A majority of respondents who reported frequent generative AI use said they have more trust in the objectivity and accuracy of machine-generated information, she said.
Although 80 percent of respondents reported spotting erroneous information in AI-generated content, a majority of those who frequently used the technology said they have more trust in machine-generated data than that of humans, Hung said.
Close to 10 percent of Taiwanese believed they could always tell AI-generated disinformation compared with 30 percent who believed they usually could and 40 percent who believed they could only sometimes, she said.
About 15 percent of study respondents said they rarely identified AI-created fake news, and a small percentage reported that they never detected falsehoods in media generated by the technology, she said.
Careless use of generative AI would likely facilitate the dissemination of fake news and amplify existing social prejudices, she said.
Public Television Service chairman Hu Yuan-hui (胡元輝), who formerly headed the Taiwan FactCheck Center, said the study was an alarming sign of media illiteracy.
People with unfounded confidence in their ability to distinguish truths from falsehoods are more likely to fall prey to a hallucinating AI, he said, referring to the tendency of malfunctioning algorithms to make up information.
Left-Handed Girl (左撇子女孩), a film by Taiwanese director Tsou Shih-ching (鄒時擎) and cowritten by Oscar-winning director Sean Baker, won the Gan Foundation Award for Distribution at the Cannes Critics’ Week on Wednesday. The award, which includes a 20,000 euro (US$22,656) prize, is intended to support the French release of a first or second feature film by a new director. According to Critics’ Week, the prize would go to the film’s French distributor, Le Pacte. "A melodrama full of twists and turns, Left-Handed Girl retraces the daily life of a single mother and her two daughters in Taipei, combining the irresistible charm of
A Philippine official has denied allegations of mistreatment of crew members during Philippine authorities’ boarding of a Taiwanese fishing vessel on Monday. Philippine Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) spokesman Nazario Briguera on Friday said that BFAR law enforcement officers “observed the proper boarding protocols” when they boarded the Taiwanese vessel Sheng Yu Feng (昇漁豐號) and towed it to Basco Port in the Philippines. Briguera’s comments came a day after the Taiwanese captain of the Sheng Yu Feng, Chen Tsung-tun (陳宗頓), held a news conference in Pingtung County and accused the Philippine authorities of mistreatment during the boarding of
88.2 PERCENT INCREASE: The variants driving the current outbreak are not causing more severe symptoms, but are ‘more contagious’ than previous variants, an expert said Number of COVID-19 cases in the nation is surging, with the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) describing the ongoing wave of infections as “rapid and intense,” and projecting that the outbreak would continue through the end of July. A total of 19,097 outpatient and emergency visits related to COVID-19 were reported from May 11 to Saturday last week, an 88.2 percent increase from the previous week’s 10,149 visits, CDC data showed. The nearly 90 percent surge in case numbers also marks the sixth consecutive weekly increase, although the total remains below the 23,778 recorded during the same period last year,
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is pushing for residents of Kinmen and Lienchiang counties to acquire Chinese ID cards in a bid to “blur national identities,” a source said. The efforts are part of China’s promotion of a “Kinmen-Xiamen twin-city living sphere, including a cross-strait integration pilot zone in China’s Fujian Province,” the source said. “The CCP is already treating residents of these outlying islands as Chinese citizens. It has also intensified its ‘united front’ efforts and infiltration of those islands,” the source said. “There is increasing evidence of espionage in Kinmen, particularly of Taiwanese military personnel being recruited by the
RSS