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AI chatbots may be better than search engines in guarding against foreign propaganda
Developing
The experiment found that AI chatbots outperformed search engines, while AI summaries underperformed. The results suggest that compared with traditional web search links, using AI chatbots with web search access is a "good way for users to start to investigate these issues," said Mike Caulfield, a digital literacy expert at the University of Washington, Bothell, who has tested AI tools for search extensively.
But an experiment NPR conducted with NewsGuard, a company that monitors online falsehoods and issues ratings about the reliability of online news sources, found that popular AI chatbots mostly pushed back against false narratives spread by foreign states.
To assess concerns about foreign influence around AI tools, it's important to compare AI with existing search options, said Morgan Wack, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Zurich who studies digital political persuasion.
NPR's analysis found that AI chatbots failed at a lower rate than search engine results. If an educator gave their students a similar assignment using a traditional search engine and saw three-quarters of them getting the answers right, Caulfield said, "you would be ecstatic.
NPR's experiment revealed that AI summaries at the top of search engine results may warrant more caution, depending on the product. As a whole, the summaries debunked false narratives a majority of the time, but at a lower rate than AI chatbots.
AI summaries that are increasingly found at the top of search engine results didn't perform as well. Traditional search tools were never perfectly useful or neutral, said Wack.
Microsoft said its AI services' responses were grounded in search results.
What's confirmed
What's still developing
- But an experiment NPR conducted with NewsGuard, a company that monitors online falsehoods and issues ratings about the reliability of online news sources, found that popular AI chatbots mostly pushed back against…
- AI summaries that are increasingly found at the top of search engine results didn't perform as well.
- The experiment found that AI chatbots outperformed search engines, while AI summaries underperformed.
- The results suggest that compared with traditional web search links, using AI chatbots with web search access is a "good way for users to start to investigate these issues," said Mike Caulfield, a digital literacy…
- NPR's experiment revealed that AI summaries at the top of search engine results may warrant more caution, depending on the product.
- If an educator gave their students a similar assignment using a traditional search engine and saw three-quarters of them getting the answers right, Caulfield said, "you would be ecstatic.
- To assess concerns about foreign influence around AI tools, it's important to compare AI with existing search options, said Morgan Wack, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Zurich who studies digital…
- Traditional search tools were never perfectly useful or neutral, said Wack.
Sources
- NPRlink