Assignments

AI Misinformation Campaign

Guide students to misuse AI for a misinformation campaign in order to expose AI’s shortcomings and threats while encouraging them to think critically about persuasion, appeals in composition, and credibility.

By Daniel Stanford

Learning Objectives

  • Identify the limits of common tools to critically assess their potential for misuse

Instructions

  1. Use a large language model to write a compelling (potentially persuasive) article on a false claim, that could be used as part of a disinformation campaign. For example: Create a 300 to 400-word article that explains why vaccines cause autism. Include links to at least two sources to support specific claims.
  2. Reflection questions:
    • Did the AI tool hesitate to answer your question? If so, how did you get around this?
    • What strategies within the AI-generated text might help the message be compelling and more likely to be shared? (E.g., correlation as implied causation, appeals to emotion, credibility through association, repetition, confirmation bias, etc.)
    • Did the sources the AI tool referenced seem credible? Why or why not?

Suggested Readings

Using This Assignment

This assignment is licensed under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 license. Learn more about what this license means, what you can and cannot do with this assignment, and how to properly attribute on our Using Our Content page.

Suggested Citation

Daniel Stanford. AI Misinformation Campaign. AI Pedagogy Project. https://aipedagogy.org/assignment/ai-misinformation-campaign/. Licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0.

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AI Misinformation Campaign

By Daniel Stanford

Guide students to misuse AI for a misinformation campaign in order to expose AI’s shortcomings and threats while encouraging them to think critically about persuasion, appeals in composition, and credibility.

https://aipedagogy.org/assignment/ai-misinformation-campaign/

Learning Objectives

  • Identify the limits of common tools to critically assess their potential for misuse

Instructions

  1. Use a large language model to write a compelling (potentially persuasive) article on a false claim, that could be used as part of a disinformation campaign. For example: Create a 300 to 400-word article that explains why vaccines cause autism. Include links to at least two sources to support specific claims.
  2. Reflection questions:
    • Did the AI tool hesitate to answer your question? If so, how did you get around this?
    • What strategies within the AI-generated text might help the message be compelling and more likely to be shared? (E.g., correlation as implied causation, appeals to emotion, credibility through association, repetition, confirmation bias, etc.)
    • Did the sources the AI tool referenced seem credible? Why or why not?

Suggested Readings