The government agency know for develop waste technology like apenny - sized vacuum , puzzling sky balloon , anda shite - ton of robotsis now tax with solving perhaps the with child menace to democracy — misinformation .
The Department of Defense ’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency ( DARPA ) “ is tap innovative research marriage offer in the area of semantic engineering to mechanically evaluate falsified media,”according to an announcement posted by the office on August 23 . The program , called Semantics Forensics ( SemaFor ) , in effect wants to figure out an automated organisation that will identify and hold against disinformation campaigns , include textual matter , audio frequency , image , and picture cognitive content .
fit in to the SemaFor announcement , the program wants to develop a crowd of algorithmic program that will canvass these coordinated attacks . The school text specifically detail three type of algorithmic program — a semantic detection one that would cipher out if mass medium is generated or manipulate , an attribution one that would reason out whether media make out from a sure organization or person , and a characterization algorithm that would determine if media was created or manipulated with malicious spirit .
Photo: Getty
DARPA ’s call for proposal make it clear that they are n’t looking for new spin on former conjuration — the bureau wants research that explore a Modern approach to defending against misinformation , not , as it express , “ evolutionary improvement to the existing state of practice . ”
And while an automated theoretical account fathom nice in theory , in execution , to day of the month , these types of algorithmically - generated systems are still flawed and biased , and in more disturbing cases , straight-out discriminatory . survive applications do not inspire a lot of faith in a near - future arrangement that would be both effective and just .
It ’s not inherently bad that the government wants to funnel resource into develop a unequaled system to forestall the types of interconnected attack that have enabled the likes of election interference , unsafe conspiracy theories , and racial extermination . But it ’s a act unknown that the agency most famous for its mostly inapplicable pipe dream - alike technology is the one charged with figuring out an essential , albeit complex , solution to an increasingly permeative social job .
Darpa
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