Seeking Truth
University of Malta (Valletta Campus)
Avoiding Fake News: Teaching Students to Evaluate Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Karma Waltonen
The 21st century proliferation of information sources and delivery media strains our students’ ability to sort unreliable from reliable sources and fake news from true. As a method of addressing this challenge, we offer a source evaluation practice that combines traditional methods of reading for tone--such as analysis of diction and writing style--with a multimodal approach that is calibrated to contemporary media. We draw upon Arola et al.’s guidelines for creating multimodal projects, and adapt them for use in students’ analyses of existing multimodal sites, such as webpages for a variety of news sources. Students examine how non-textual elements, such as layout, still photos, video, sound, and color reflect the rhetorical situation of the webpage and contribute to its overall tone. After examining these elements, the students are encouraged to draw connections between the multimodal tone and the textual elements of the sites. This activity encourages students to be more savvy consumers of information and more attentive evaluators of sources of information. While the activity works well with all students, it is particularly useful for L2 students whose access to the subtle nuances of word choice may be more limited than that of L1 students. In our paper, we offer examples of how this activity unfolds in the classroom, as well as suggestions for writing assignments that might follow from it.
Deliberative Democracy, Artificial Intelligence, and the Utopian Visions of Iain M. Banks’s Culture Novels
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Kieran O'Doherty
In recent years, there has been increasing attention to AI governance, that is, how emerging AI technologies should be governed to maximise benefits and minimise risks. Equally important is the question of what the role of AI is as a tool of governance. As AI technologies become more effective and used in a broader range of domains, they will become ever more attractive as tools to make decisions for public policies. Viewed through the lens of deliberative democratic principles, this is a dire prediction. Ideals of deliberative democracy hold that public policy should be open to input from anyone who is potentially affected by that policy. Heavy reliance on AI potentially stands in tension with truly deliberative forms of governance that rely on input from broader publics. The purpose of this paper is to use the work of science fiction author Iain M. Banks to explore some of the ethical and governance challenges of AI in a far distant future scenario. Many science fiction authors have speculated about societies in which AI has assumed a dominant role. For the most part, worlds are dystopian with humas at the mercy of all-powerful intelligent machines. In contrast, Banks explores a highly utopian vision in which humans and other sentient species live under the benevolent oversight of Minds – super intelligent spaceships and habitats. Banks’s vision provides an excellent framework for speculating about the future relationship between human and non-human intelligences when determining social visions that influence our future.
Building Trust in Disruptive Science: Public Perceptions of Responsible Innovation View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Rod Mc Crea
Our increasingly complex environmental, social, and economic pressures demand fast-tracked and potentially disruptive solutions from science and technology. Responsible innovation is about minimising social and ethical risks and delivering socially desirable outcomes from novel technologies. With societal benefits come potential risks when trying to solve complex challenges with novel and innovative solutions. Thus, public trust in scientists and the innovation sector when developing novel solutions is essential. While many studies focus on trust in science, especially on demographic and messaging factors, few focus on the trust needed in scientists and scientific institutions when developing novel and potentially risky technologies. In particular, little is know about how important public perceptions of responsible innovation may be for building trust in scientists and institutions in the innovation sector. This study develops a comprehensive set of reliable and valid measures for public perceptions of responsible innovation to understand how much these relate to trust in the innovation sector, as well as public expectations of socially responsible outcomes from novel innovations. A survey of 4,080 Australians found that two-thirds of public trust in the innovation sector could be explained by perceptions of science practices supporting responsiveness to the public; research ethics; risk management; and public confidence in the regulation of future science and technology. Furthermore, three-quarters of expected socially responsible outcomes could be explained by trust in the sector, together with perceived benefits. Perceptions of risks were less important than managing risk for public expectations of socially responsible outcomes.
