Participants can watch the recording online here.
Join us on March 20 at 5 p.m. ET as Beth Simone Noveck talks with Ed Bice of Meedan, Winner of the 2024 Skoll Award for Social Innovation.
Active in 65 countries, Meedan is at the forefront of combating misinformation and strengthening democracy through innovative AI solutions. As major platforms like Meta scale back their fact-checking programs, this timely conversation addresses the urgent challenges of maintaining information integrity in our digital landscape, especially in connection with elections.
The dangers of unchecked misinformation have been starkly demonstrated in crises like the Rohingya genocide, where social media platforms became vehicles for hatred and violence. In today's post-truth environment, developing robust technological solutions to verify information and counter false narratives has never been more critical.
Since 2012, Meedan's open-source platform "Check" has supported fact-checkers and information providers working in dozens of languages. Their approach includes standout projects like "Inés," a WhatsApp chatbot deployed during Mexico's 2024 presidential election that processed thousands of voter queries in just 54 days, providing accurate information and countering election-related falsehoods.
In our conversation, we will explore cutting-edge strategies for leveraging AI in the fight against misinformation, including Meedan's SynDy framework that makes fact-checking more accessible and scalable. By using large language models to automatically generate training data, SynDy helps organizations identify emerging narrative patterns and create preemptive content before misinformation gains traction.
As Ed Bice powerfully notes, "Democracy is the operating system for society. Disinformation is a virus." Join us to discover how AI can help build robust systems that protect our democratic processes and information ecosystem in an era where traditional fact-checking infrastructures are being dismantled.
More about Ed Bice:
Ed Bice is the CEO and Board Chair of the global technology non-profit Meedan. Since founding Meedan in 2006 he has devoted his professional energies to improving equity, accessibility, and credibility in online environments. Ed has led strategy and project definition on open source software development focused on human-in-the-loop approaches to translating, verifying, investigating and fact-checking digital content.
Ed was a recipient of the 2024 Skoll Award for Social Innovation. He is a member of the PAI (Partnership on AI) AI and Media Steering Committee. Meedan’s work has received numerous awards including two Knight News Challenge Awards, two Online News Association Awards and two International Fact-Checking Networks’ Collaborative Impact awards.
Meedan’s technical work on a platform that enables journalists to leverage AI to better respond to questions on closed messaging platforms received a National Science Foundation Convergence grant (2022-24).
The Rebooting Democracy in the Age of AI lecture series is hosted by the Burnes Center for Social Change at Northeastern University and the The GovLab, in partnership with the Institute for Experiential AI and the Internet Democracy Initiative.
The series explores how AI is reshaping democracy and brings together experts from diverse fields to discuss how AI can offer fresh solutions to the challenges facing modern democratic governance.
