African leaders can’t afford to wait for Big Tech. By taking action, the continent could spare future generations from the scourge of adversarial AI.

This year marks 30 years since the Rwandan genocide in 1994, when a Hutu-majority government and a privately owned radio station with close ties to the government colluded to murder 800,000 people.

The year 1994 may seem recent, but for a continent as young as Africa (where the median age is 19), it’s more like a distant past.

Suppose this had happened today, in the age of the algorithm. How much more chaos and murder would ensue if doctored images and deepfakes were proliferating on social media rather than radio, and radicalizing even more of the public? None of this is beyond reach, and countries including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, and Niger are at risk—owing to their confluence of ethno-religious tensions, political instability, and the presence of foreign adversaries.

AfricaCheck.org

      • DolphinMath@slrpnk.netOPEnglish
        0·
        5 months ago

        Haha, I was wondering when someone was going to point that outs You’ll notice both MBFC and Ad Fontes were given that status primarily due to being Self-Published. However I wouldn’t consider MBFC or Ad Fontes to be the end all be all perfectly authoritative source either.

      • yeahiknow3@lemmings.worldEnglish
        0·
        5 months ago

        When MBFC factualness ratings of ‘mostly factual’ or higher were compared to an independent fact checking dataset’s ‘verified’ and ‘suspicious’ news sources, the two datasets showed “almost perfect.”

        I was trying to find the criticism you cited, but it must be buried somewhere under a mountain of praise. Could you explain what the nature of their complaint is? I’m out of the loop.

      • sandbox@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        4 months ago

        I clicked your link. Not only is the quote you provided not actually present in your source, but the sentiment isn’t even there. The article is mostly about how reliable and consistent the website is.

        • blurg@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          4 months ago

          Huh, that’s so, it was there last January. It used to follow this paragraph (still there today anyway), which contains a similar criticism with citation:

          It is widely used and has sometimes been criticised for its methodology.[4] Scientific studies[5] using its ratings note that ratings from Media Bias/Fact Check show high agreement with an independent fact checking dataset from 2017,[6] with NewsGuard[7] and with BuzzFeed journalists.

          So if those are considered fact-based, there’s no need to delve further.