UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Dongwon Lee, professor in the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST), has received a fellowship at the Center for Advanced Internet Studies (CAIS) in Bochum, Germany. He will study ways to better understand misinformation on a global scale and explore the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to make it faster and easier to spot false information online.
CAIS, which funds research on the societal opportunities and challenges of digital transformation, will host Lee from July through September.
An interim head of IST’s Department of Privacy and Cybersecurity Informatics and faculty affiliate at the Center for Socially Responsible Artificial Intelligence at Penn State, Lee said he is excited about the fellowship and the research opportunity it provides.
“To maintain a trustworthy and healthy digital ecosystem, it is critically important to improve our understanding of global patterns of fact-checking, especially under the growing influence of generative AI and AI hallucinations,” he said. “Through the new collaborations I hope to establish in Germany and across Europe, I aim to gain access to new European fact-checking datasets and develop novel research questions.”
Lee will use a collection of about 200,000 fact-checked claims from around the world, written in 39 different languages, to study how false or misleading information spreads and how people try to verify it. He aims to answer two main questions:
- How do claims and fact-checking efforts change over time, across different places and between languages?
- How is generative AI affecting the creation of claims and the work of fact-checkers?
The goal is to help fact-checkers, journalists and government leaders better understand misinformation on a global scale.
“This prestigious fellowship recognizes Dongwon’s outstanding contributions to addressing one of today’s most urgent challenges,” said Andrea Tapia, dean of the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology. “As he engages with scholars and partners around the world, Dongwon will represent the spirit of discovery, leadership and public impact that defines Penn State and the College of IST. We are immensely proud of this achievement.”
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