Beware: misinformation can kill
Navigating false claims during a pandemic
Imagine you read “Coronavirus is less deadly than the flu” on Twitter or a news site. You might wonder whether this claim is false, but it is not always obvious. As we’ve seen with the emergence of the COVID-19 global pandemic, there is a link between the spread of the virus and the spread of the right information surrounding it.
Verifying claims on the internet is not an easy task. This is where “The Hitchhikers Guide to the Internet” comes in — a Google Chrome extension developed by a team in the UK. Using artificial intelligence (AI), the tool looks at social media you interact with, identifies claims and analyzes their veracity by performing Natural Language Processing to identify whether top sources agree with it. The extension then provides a scoring for the claim as well as showing you the sources in case you want to investigate further.
This project is part of the Call for Code IBM internal challenge, and as the team members (Matt Emerson, Craig Forrest, Cameron Roberts, Richard Waller and James Wallis) point out,
Our tool could be used by the millions of people around the world who want an easier way to spot health misinformation. They can simply download our browser extension onto their desktop and mobile browsers, via the relevant app stores. It would then highlight COVID-19-related claims on any website, including Twitter, Facebook, and bbc.co.uk.
The tool can also be used to help people spot misinformation about climate change, politics and more.
