Interview with futurist Marcel Bullinga by S&P Global Market Intelligence. Full article: “Searching for real solutions to fake news”

“Yet Marcel Bullinga — a futurist and author cited in Pew Research Center’s recent report on the subject — thinks the solution to fake news cannot come from individual private companies.

Instead, he said the solution must be portable, traveling with the user no matter which website or platform they visit. He noted there were already a number of “ethical [artificial intelligence] initiatives” dedicated to this effort, with most of them working on open-source, transparent solutions.

One solution Bullinga is specifically interested in is a personal news robot that could block fake news or flag potential bias or identify a conflict in interest.

“The robot also filters my news feed in other ways. He filters all bullying sites from my view, and even filters my own messages before I post them, if they tend to be aggressive and abusive,” he said. “So the robot gives us back our control over our news life. Not Google or Facebook.”

With personal robots still in relatively early stages of development, it could be some time before the solution would be feasible on a large scale, though.”