Online misinformation is a hidden problem. We tend to be on guard for disinformation, outright lies such as fake reviews. Because disinformation intends to mislead, we treat it as dangerous. We learn to avoid sources of disinformation.
Misinformation is more subtle. The content wasn’t created to deceive, but it still misleads, due to its ambiguity.
Anyone can post misleading information online, even if they don’t intend to. Misinformation is not a problem of bad actors. We can’t divide information between misleading and non-misleading sources, because most sources can mislead someone at some point.
Content can be misleading without being deceptive. Human communication is inherently ambiguous, and once statements are posted online, it’s hard to tighten up the meaning of what’s already been said.
Readers are expected to exercise judgment and care before taking any statement at face value. They ask themselves what details have not been mentioned, or might have changed? They verify the content’s credibility and relevance from their personal perspective.
We evaluate online information as a matter of habit. We sift through online content looking for content that seems relevant and reliable. We focus on finding content relevant to our need and skip over content that seems off target.
People online are jaded: they scan answers with a skeptical eye and filter out misleading information. As a consequence, they typically won’t notice how much of the content online is potentially misleading. They encounter misleading content only when they get a “bum steer” from Google, telling them something is relevant when it isn’t, or else find that no online sources seem to answer the question they have.
Red flags in online content
On a recent vacation, I encountered how common misinformation is online. I was visiting Romania for the first time, and my guidebooks didn’t cover many of the details I needed to know.
Vacations are full of microdecisions: where to eat, which place to go to, and how to get from point A to point B. Each of these decisions depends on reliable information. The traveler’s primary goal is to find factual information to assess, rather than sample subjective opinions.
Much online travel advice comes from crowd-sourced information, such as traveler’s forums or reviews. Other information is aggregated from mix of sources, such as reservation consolidators. Unknown sources often supply the facts about schedules, options, or feasibility. Travelers need to check various sources to determine what information and advice is “best” for them. However, even hyper-vigilance and cross-checking data do not ensure reliability.
Travelers start with a question, such as, Can they visit a venue tomorrow? On the surface, it is a simple question of the hours during which the venue is open. But in practice, the question involves assumptions that only the opening hours are relevant. I discovered that opening hours may be misleading. Bots list venue opening hours, but include some venues that were out of business or temporarily closed for renovations or relocation. They won’t disclose hidden availability factors, such as when access is unavailable during peak periods that are not mentioned. Venue opening hours can be misleading.
Another situation I faced was how to get to a neighboring town. Google displayed bus routes that were no longer in operation. It apparently lifted the timetables from another timetable aggregator website, which had not updated them. The information may have been accurate at some point, but it is misleading now.
I searched online for how to pay for city buses. While each town I visited had broadly similar buses, the payment process varied, involving either tickets and passes, transit cards, credit cards, and/or apps. Yet, online answers did not note any of these differences. Instead, Google generated generic answers that weren’t necessarily accurate for the town in question. Generic answers proved misleading.
Another case of wrong answers arose from restaurant searches. I was searching for vegetarian restaurant options, but Google was giving me many “bum steers”.
My searches often yielded false positives, where the information suggested something available, but it wasn’t. Both searches and chatbots rely on keywords that can serve as false flags. An online reviewer might mention that a restaurant had no vegetarian options, but chatbots present the restaurant as a vegetarian-friendly option.
Yet, false negatives – misleading indications that nothing is available – are equally a problem. Other restaurants with many vegetarian options remain invisible, as they have not been discussed online by reviewers. When crowd-sourced content remains silent about something that exists in the real world, it highlights the limitations of crowd-sourced information in staying current.
Crowd-sourced content can be misleading because it may contain outdated information or fail to incorporate recent developments. It fails to keep pace with the realities on the ground.
But why highlight online misinformation if it isn’t a new problem? It’s because the human review is increasingly bypassed. Humans can spot misleading information, but AI bots can’t. AI bots don’t understand the ambiguities within information that might cause it to be misleading. It doesn’t understand the context of the information it draws from.
AI agents promise to offload numerous decisions from customers. Travel is one such domain that AI agents promise to simplify and streamline for travellers. No longer will travelers need to worry about pesky details – the bot will take care of them.
Yet, rather than liberate from the chore of chasing down information, AI bots impose a risk on us that the information is incomplete and misleading. And when we can’t rely on the information, we face even more work trying to verify or augment what bots tell us.
Online misinformation is a larger problem than is generally recognized. It presents a big risk to the performance of AI bots.
– Michael Andrews