MISINFORMATION and radicalizing messages already pose a significant threat to society, says Yong-Yeol Ahn, a professor at Indiana University. It is about to become considerably worse—and he and others want to do something about it.

“With artificial intelligence you’re introducing the potential ability to mine data about individual people and quickly generate targeted messages that appeal to them—applying big data to individuals—which could cause even greater disruptions than we’ve already experienced,” says Ahn, who is  professor in the  IU Luddy School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering in Bloomington.

Many businesses, both big, medium and small— will be heavily involved on both sides of the approaching deluge.

In an attempt to get ahead of this wave , an Indiana University research team will lead a multi-institutional team of experts under a $7.5 million grant from the U. S. Department of Defense. Over five years they will assess the role that AI might play in strengthening the influence of online communications.

“This is a basic science project; everything we’re doing is completely open to the public,” Ahn says. “But it also a lot of potential applications, not only in understanding the role of AI on misinformation and disinformation campaigns, such as foreign influence on elections, but also topics such as how can you foster trust in AI, similar to a pilot’s faith in the reliability of AI navigation systems.

“There are a lot of important questions about AI that hinge on our understanding of its intersection with fundamental psychological theories.”

Specifically, Ahn says, the project will investigate the role of a sociological concept called “resonance” on people’s receptiveness to certain messages. This refers to the idea that people’s opinions are influenced more strongly by material that resonates with them through emotional content or narrative framing that appeals to existing beliefs or cognitive biases, such as political ideology, religious convictions or cultural norms.

Resonance can be used to create messages that bridge gaps between groups, as well as fuel greater polarization, Ahn adds. However, AI’s ability to rapidly generate text-, image- or video-based content has the potential to escalate the power of these messages—for good or ill—by tailoring content to people on the individual level.

Will use AI technology

The team will also be applying AI technology to support its research, he added. The use of AI to create “model agents” — or virtual people who share information and react to messages inside a simulation — will help the researchers more accurately model the way information flows between groups, as well as the effect that information has on the “people” inside the model, Ann says.

The team also plans to study real-life humans’ physical response to online information, both AI- and non-AI generated, with tools such as heart rate monitors to better understand the influence of their “resonance,” he says.

“There have been a lot of major developments in the area of model agents in the past few years,” Ahn adds.

Other researchers have been able to create model agents who “debate” each other in a virtual space, then measure the effect of this debate on their simulated opinions, for example.

The IU-led team’s work will represent a “major departure” from other attempts to model belief systems through the simulation of people’s opinions, Ahn explains. The project will apply “a complex network of interacting beliefs and concepts, integrated with social contagion theory” to produce “a holistic, dynamic model of multi-level belief resonance.”

The result would be a system that more closely resembles real-life complexities, where people’s opinions aren’t simply based upon political party but rather a complex intersection of belief systems, or social dynamics. For instance, Ahn says, an individual’s social group or attitudes toward the medical industry may predict their opinions about vaccine safety more accurately than political ideology.

IU co-principal investigators on the project are assistant professor Jisun An,  professor Alessandro Flaming,  assistant professor Gregory Lewis and Luddy Distinguished Professor Filippo Menezer, all of the Luddy School in Bloomington. Lewis is also an assistant research scientist at the Kinsey Institute. Haewoon Kwak, associate professor at the Luddy School, will serve as senior personnel.

Other co-principal investigators on the grant are Best Grabe of Boston University, Madeline Vlasceanu of Stanford and Timothy Tangherlini of UC Berkeley. The research project will also involve several Ph.D. and undergraduate students at IU.