AI Fake News and Reviews with Peter Sisson

With AI having the ability to search the internet and write a paper, create an image, or even a video having someone say what they didn’t say, we can no longer use the phrase that seeing is believing. Today’s guest is Peter Sisson. As a serial entrepreneur with a master’s in AI from Stanford, Peter is working to fight fake news, fake reviews, and fake products. Misinformation and polarization have exploded since Peter began his career in Silicon Valley more than 20 years ago and his latest company CertifyIt offers an app that can help stop it.

Show Notes:

• [1:08] - Peter shares his background in AI and as a serial entrepreneur.
• [3:01] - We believe what we see and it is already getting hard to determine what is real.
• [4:38] - The biggest concern is faking videos and faking images is already happening.
• [6:04] - The technology isn’t there yet and usually you can tell when an image or video is fabricated.
• [7:55] - AI has been trained by the entire internet. AI can write anything you want it to, but none of it is original.
• [9:18] - AI doesn’t actually know anything. It uses what is already available to learn patterns. Peter explains how it works.
• [11:25] - There are a lot of ethical concerns about using AI to create content.
• [12:51] - News providers use CertifyIt to know that content they release is accurate before they break fake news.
• [14:08] - Peter shares the story of CNN breaking news that wasn’t true but really appeared to be accurate.
• [16:16] - How does CertifyIt use metadata to confirm accuracy?
• [18:07] - Chris and Peter discuss some examples of how people need to use CertifyIt, which is a public benefit corporation.
• [21:01] - It is a simple concept, but it works and is a viable solution to ensure content is accurate.
• [22:25] - The sooner the video is determined to be true, it is news that can be broken faster.
• [23:46] - Fake reviews are a big problem right now where people are even hired to write them for companies or products.
• [26:21] - Certified location videos could be beneficial for certain products or services.
• [27:50] - A third party like CertifyIt is necessary as people won’t believe the vetting if it’s done by the news organization.
• [30:16] - You can trick people’s brains pretty easily as we are designed to believe what we see. This is especially easy if the viewer is tired or distracted.
• [31:50] - The more people get fooled, the more they will need a tool to vet the accuracy of a video they view.
• [33:29] - There will be false positives and false negatives as the technology gets better and better.
• [35:54] - The things that AI can create are truly very cool and can be entertaining, but the way people use it will change and probably not for the greater good.
• [38:21] - It will be possible to create alternate realities that are very convincing.
• [39:23] - It will probably take something major happening to bring this problem to light for the general public.