How to Build a Truth Engine: Friedrich Moser on Disinformation and the Mind - What we now know about psychological warfare conspiracy theories and finding reliable information

Austrian filmmaker Friedrich “Fritz” Moser discusses his documentary, How to Build a Truth Engine. The film brings together investigative journalism, computer science, and neuroscience to examine our susceptibility to disinformation and what might help us resist it. The film was executive produced by George Clooney. Fritz initially set out to make a film about automating fact-checking. Could technology help investigators keep pace with the material circulating online? His work eventually brought him to Prof. Vwani Roychowdhury of UCLA and Prof. Tim Tangherlini of UC Berkeley and their research group developing StoryMiner, a system for analyzing narratives and the relationships within them. In the film, visualizations help make complicated connections among claims, people, and events easier to examine. The researchers also encouraged him to speak with neuroscientists. Finding errors in a story and understanding a person’s attachment to that story are different tasks. That distinction matters in my work. Someone may have built friendships, a sense of purpose, and part of their identity around a belief system. Presenting contradictory evidence can be important, but we also need to understand what reconsidering would mean for that person.Fritz’s original technology question grew into a much broader inquiry: Why are we susceptible to disinformation, and how can we become better equipped to evaluate it? This interview covers crucial insights and technologies what can help us navigate the psychological warfare that is being used on peoples around the world. A fascinating interview.