Parmy Olson, Columnist

AI Isn’t the Only Misinformation Culprit to Worry About

Leaders at Davos are worried about AI misinformation in a big election year. But they mustn’t forget how Facebook and TikTok spread it.

January 19, 2024 at 5:00 AM UTC

By Parmy Olson

Parmy Olson is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering technology. A former reporter for the Wall Street Journal and Forbes, she is author of “Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT and the Race That Will Change the World.”

Fuel.
Photographer: Buda Mendes/Getty Images South America

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As global leaders descended on Davos this week, many fretted about the World Economic Forum’s top risk for 2024: AI-generated misinformation.

OpenAI is “quite focused” on stopping the political misuse of tools like ChatGPT, its CEO Sam Altman said at a Bloomberg event at the conference on Tuesday. His company teased new tools for thwarting misinformation in a big US election year. That effort is laudable, but leaders at the Swiss talking shop must remember how significant a role good old-fashioned social media still plays in disrupting elections and democracy itself.