The potential of AI-driven truth technologies: opportunities, risks and governance

The paper explores how AI-driven truth technologies—tools and methods for determining the accuracy and truthfulness of information, statements, or claims—can be developed and utilised to mitigate misinformation and disinformation. Expectations, opportunities, risks, and governance principles are identified through 23 semi-structured qualitative interviews with distinguished professionals and academics. The results suggest that AI capabilities are expected to continue advancing and rapidly escalating AI-generated misinformation and disinformation, which undermine democracies and amplify societal polarisation. AI-driven truth technologies present opportunities to counter this development, including improved fact-checking, evaluation of publishing sources, and the contextualisation of information. Hence, truth technologies are expected to be locked into an inevitable arms race against increasingly sophisticated disinformation techniques. The results also suggest risks associated with such truth technologies, including oversimplification and bias, users’ overreliance, and misuse for manipulation or censorship, and emphasise the need for effective management and regulation to mitigate these risks. Truth technologies should, as such, be decentralised, transparent, explainable, overseen by trustworthy bodies, and complemented by education in critical thinking. In addition to the importance of effective management and public education, the paper emphasises the crucial importance of understanding the effects of power structures in shaping the development of AI. Users, developers and regulators of AI-driven truth technologies are encouraged to consider the expectations, scale the opportunities, mitigate the risks, and follow the outlined governance principles to maximise the potential of such truth technologies in counteracting misinformation and disinformation.