[Paper Review] AI could create a perfect storm of climate misinformation

Victor Galaz, H. Metzler+4 more|arXiv (Cornell University)|Jun 22, 2023

Misinformation and Its Impacts13 citations

TL;DR

The paper analyzes how AI, social platforms, and recommender systems could magnify climate misinformation, urging coordinated action by policymakers, researchers, and the public.

ABSTRACT

We are in the midst of a transformation of the digital news ecosystem. The expansion of online social networks, the influence of recommender systems, increased automation, and new generative artificial intelligence tools are rapidly changing the speed and the way misinformation about climate change and sustainability issues moves around the world. Policymakers, researchers and the public need to combine forces to address the dangerous combination of opaque social media algorithms, polarizing social bots, and a new generation of AI-generated content. This synthesis brief is the result of a collaboration between Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University, the Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Complexity Science Hub Vienna, and Karolinska Institutet. It has been put together as an independent contribution to the Nobel Prize Summit 2023, Truth, Trust and Hope, Washington D.C., 24th to 26th of May 2023.

Motivation & Objective

• Motivate attention to climate misinformation in the evolving digital news ecosystem.
• Assess how AI tools, recommender systems, and automated agents may interact to spread misinformation on climate and sustainability.
• Highlight policy and research gaps and propose collaborative responses for truth, trust, and hope.

Proposed method

• Synthesis brief produced through collaboration among Stockholm Resilience Centre, Beijer Institute, Complexity Science Hub, and Karolinska Institutet.
• Analysis of the changing digital news ecosystem with emphasis on online networks, recommender systems, automation, and AI-generated content.
• Argumentation focused on the need to address opaque social media algorithms, polarizing bots, and new AI content-generation tools.

Experimental results

Research questions

• RQ1 How might opaque social media algorithms, polarizing bots, and AI-generated content interact to spread climate misinformation?
• RQ2 What policy, research, and societal actions are needed to counteract the convergence of AI content generation and platform dynamics?
• RQ3 What collaborative strategies can protect truth, trust, and hope in climate communications?

Key findings

• The paper identifies a dangerous combination of opaque social media algorithms, polarizing bots, and AI-generated content as contributors to climate misinformation.
• It emphasizes the rapid evolution of the digital news ecosystem and the need for coordinated action across policymakers, researchers, and the public.
• It frames a synthesis brief intended for the Nobel Prize Summit context to spur cross-sector responses.