The internet has made it easier than ever before to encounter and spread conspiracy theories. And while some are harmless, others can be deeply damaging, sowing discord and even leading to unnecessary deaths. Now, researchers believe they've uncovered a new tool for combating false conspiracy theories: AI chatbots. Researchers from MIT Sloan and Cornell University found that chatting about a conspiracy theory with a large language model (LLM) reduced people's belief in it by about 20%--even among participants who claimed that their beliefs were important to their identity The findings could represent an important step forward in how we engage with and educate people who espouse baseless theories. Google's new tool lets large language models fact-check their responses The news: Google is releasing a tool called DataGemma that it hopes will help to reduce problems caused by AI'hallucinating', or making incorrect claims.

In 2020, the Wikipedia community was engulfed in scandal when it came out that a US teen had written 27,000 entries in a language they didn't speak. The episode was a reminder that the online encyclopedia is not a perfect source of information. Sometimes people will attempt to edit Wikipedia entries out of malice, but frequently factual errors come from some well-intentioned individual making a mistake. That's a problem the Wikimedia Foundation recently partnered with Facebook parent company Meta to address. The two set their sights on citations.