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Why the fake news problem needs an AI and a blockchain solution

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Why the fake news problem needs an AI and a blockchain solution

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has given new impetus to online fake news to the extent that anti-misinformation firm NewsGuard is currently tracking 201 sites that it claims are spreading myths about the war. It’s not a new problem. War, of course, only accelerates it and the tactic is as old as the hills – the British famously set-up a transmitter called Aspidistra in 1942 to transmit programmes that would try to convince the German people that the war was going badly for their country.

The problem is that misinformation appears to be growing and it’s not all about Russia and Ukraine. There was a spike during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as recent elections and referendums in the US and Europe. Where there’s an opportunity to polarise opinion, or to steal data, it seems fake news will increasingly emerge.

The worrying development though is that AI is now being used to disseminate fake news. Julia Ebner, senior research fellow at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue recently detailed how Russian AI was used to identify, amplify and exploit grievances online, in order to undermine peace in Western nations. Speaking at a recent Cityforum webinar, she said that in effect, Russian was using AI to weaponise extremist ideologies and conspiracies.

AI, though, has huge potential in fighting it too. We need it, because we have to remember; we are all prone to being duped. As the World Economic Forum warned in its recent report  ‘The Ability to ‘Distil the Truth’, it’s not just those with “with poor science knowledge, low cognitive abilities and a tendency to be accepting of weak claims,” that believe false stories. No one is immune, which is why a technology solution it the best way to go.

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Industry needs to plug IoT security holes or face vertical meltdown

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Industry needs to plug IoT security holes or face vertical meltdown

It comes as no surprise that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has triggered increased cyber activity in Europe and the US, with suspected Russian state-backed hackers looking for opportunities to destabilise western economies and critical infrastructures. It’s even prompted US President Biden to recently release a statement outlining the risks and what businesses need to do to try and counter any attack.

As a Sophos Russia-Ukraine cyberattack page claims, this is all sound advice but the fear is that despite years of guidance and warnings, so many businesses still come up short on security. As Sophos reveals, “every day we assist companies who have only protected some of their assets, keep few if any, logs, are months if not years out of date on patching their systems and have open remote access to the internet with single-factor authentication.”

While for many enterprises this is fixable, there are growing fears that for many verticals it represents a more complex challenge, particularly with the internet of things (IoT). With vertical industries expected to spend over $188 billion on IoT devices and services this year, the prospect of cyber breaches and disruption to industry is very real.

According to a PSA Certified 2022 Security Report, there are significant gaps in IoT security provision, with technology decision-makers citing a lack of internal expertise and cost as inhibiting them from implementing stronger security. Only 31% of technology decision-makers feel ‘very satisfied’ with their level of security expertise in-house, while 59% still admit that internal validation is relied upon to certify security implementations.

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How will companies manage skills gaps? More money? More training?

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How will companies manage skills gaps? More money? More training?

The tech industry has always been a bellwether of progress and with it, the ability of governments, educators and recruiters to keep pace with its changing demands. It’s interesting to remember the days when tech jobs were being decimated. Twenty years ago, Silicon Valley was laying off high tech workers in their thousands. This wasn’t a declining industry. As Wired reported at the time, this was a changing industry, one that had contended with a dotcom boom and bust period and was re-emerging into a decade that would see companies such as Skype, Facebook, Spotify and YouTube launch. The tech industry was not in crisis but in a constant state of flux, re-inventing and demanding new skills to enable innovation.

The best way to think about that is to consider the jobs that didn’t really exist in the early 2000s. Front end developers, UX designers, BI developers, cloud architects, data scientists; all have become specialist areas of work, where skills have evolved rapidly and demanded on-going learning. According to research by Gartner, 29% of the skills that were present in an average job posting in 2018 will be obsolete this year. So, we have a market, where demand for skills is growing and evolving rapidly and seemingly, a smaller pool of relevant candidates with the required skills to do those jobs.

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