February 9, 2024 Building tools to combat mis- and disinformation: AI4Trust Paris meeting Author(s): Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy Researchers from the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy are at the AI4Trust Paris Meeting Hugo Leal, Stefanie Felsberger, and Gina Neff are in Paris for the AI4Trust February consortium meeting. The AI4TRUST project aims to combat misinformation and disinformation in Europe by creating a trust-based toolkit that combines the automated monitoring of social and news media with advanced AI-based technologies, to enhance the work of human fact-checkers. This week’s meeting brings together the technical teams, who are building the automated tools, with the fact checking and media organisations who are the ‘humans-in-the-loop’ of this system. They are also joined by our partners who are working with the MCTD team on policy and social science research to ensure that the tool works for the people who will use it. Such meetings are valuable in seeing the different starting points and perspectives different stakeholders bring to these transdisciplinary teams. Gina Neff said: “One of the things I found really interesting was a session where each of the approaches to misinformation – computational versus journalistic versus social scientific –surfaced differences and connections in how different participants think about the project. What these consortium meetings can do is connect us in new ways to think about the problem with a fresh perspective. At the group dinner I looked around the room and realised that this group of engaged, smart and energised people were all working hard to improve our digital society through better and more trusted information environments. And I felt extraordinarily lucky to be a part of it.” Read more about the work of AI4Trust here.