Countering Misinformation with AI and Human Language Technology

An MIT study of tweets found that “falsehood diffuses significantly farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than the truth, in all categories of information, and in many cases by an order of magnitude.” The speed of AI is the only way to keep up with detecting, fact-checking and tagging cascades of misinformation.

Augmenting human efforts with the speed of AI is the only way to keep up with detecting, fact-checking and tagging cascades of misinformation. Second, tracking the flow of known misinformation as it spreads and gets repackaged and altered.

HLTCon includes insightful talks on human language technology and AI advances to combat misinformation and disinformation, as well as issues of data quality for training models and new technologies that are tackling old problems in new ways.

* The event will be recorded and can be viewed for a limited time after the event, so if you are unable to make it live, please register to receive the link to the recording.

Day 1: Ensuring Training Data Quality
March 16, 2021  •  11 AM – 1 PM  ET
KEYNOTE: Doug Reynolds

Day 2: Combating Misinformation
March 17, 2021 • 11 AM – 1 PM ET
KEYNOTE: Joe Campbell & Danelle Shah

Day 3: New Capabilities for the Mission
March 18, 2021 • 11 AM – 1 PM ET
KEYNOTE: Zeynep Tufekci

Virtual Spy Museum tour included with registration:

Featured Speakers

Zeynep Tufekci

Professor and Writer

University of North Carolina, New York Times and the Atlantic

Doug Reynolds

Technical Director, VISTA Research

DoD

Joe Campbell

Group Leader, AI Technology & Systems Group

MIT Lincoln Laboratory

Danelle Shah

Asst Group Leader, AI Technology & Systems Group

MIT Lincoln Laboratory

Dr. Catherine Havasi

Chief Product Officer

Basis Technology

Farid Moussa

Senior Text Analytics Product Manager

Basis Technology
View All Speakers

Agenda

Day 1: Ensuring Training Data Quality

March 16, 2021 • 11 AM – 1 PM EDT
KEYNOTE: Doug Reynolds

Human labor is the slowest link in the journey from an idea for machine augmentation of analysts to a real, effective NLP system. Human-annotation of training data for machine learning systems dwarfs the engineering model building on a scale of more than 20:1. NLP experts from government, industry, and MIT with experience in production-ready systems, will introduce new strategies and technologies that are drastically decreasing human labor while also increasing the quality of the end product. Continuous feedback empowers non-technical users to correct and increase the accuracy of deployed models.

Day 2: Combating Misinformation

March 17, 2021 • 11 AM – 1 PM EDT
KEYNOTE: Joe Campbell & Danelle Shah

Information Operations is a particularly timely area of intelligence work that leverages NLP over a variety of media and languages. Players in disinformation are more elusive and difficult to address head-on, creating gaps in intelligence whether they represent misinformation or InfoOps players. Speakers will discuss the problem space of “you don’t know what you don’t know” to set the stage for day three of HLTCon.

Day 3: New Capabilities for the Mission

March 18, 2021 • 11 AM – 1 PM EDT
KEYNOTE: Zeynep Tufekci

New NLP technology making progress towards solving the age-old intelligence problem: “How do you discover that which you don’t know to look for?” Event extraction can reveal patterns of actions involving players that were previously under the radar. What if a machine augmented intelligence gathering workflow that collected data on known persons of interest, also tracked peripheral yet-unknown persons (“ghosts”) to eventually build up full identity profiles? Learn how NLP is bringing the theoretical to life.

Day 3 BONUS: Virtual Spy Museum Tour

Join the team from Basis Technology on a tour of the International Spy Museum! Infiltrate the museum collections from the safety of your own home. This tour will blend captivating storytelling with videos, gadgets, and activities.