AI: Reporting on the New Battleground of Disinformation, Election Integrity, and Governance

Join the Cyber Policy Center, together with the Program on Democracy and the Internet for AI: Reporting on the New Battleground of Disinformation, Election Integrity, and Governance, a conversation with  award-winning New York Times reporters Cecilia Kang and Sheera Frenkel. It will be moderated by Nate Persily, co director of the Stanford Cyber Policy Center. This session is part of the Spring Seminar Series, a series spanning April through June, hosted at the Cyber Policy Center with the Program on Democracy and the Internet. Sessions are in-person and virtual, with in-person attendance offered to Stanford affiliates only. Lunch is provided for in-person attendance and registration is required.

Two years after the publication of "An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook's Battle for Domination" in 2021, co-authors Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang are reporting on many of the same themes from their investigation into the social media giant, now clear and present with the boom in artificial intelligence. New A.I. tools have sparked even greater concerns about disinformation, data privacy, troubling business models, and the slow response by U.S. regulators. Frenkel and Kang will talk about lessons learned from Web 2.0, new threats from A.I. tools to spread false information even faster and more convincingly. What are the stakes and how is Washington responding?

This session will take place in Encina Commons, Moghadam 123.

About the Speakers:

Sheera and Cecilia, along with colleagues at the New York Times, were awarded the George Polk Award and were Pulitzer Prize finalists for their coverage of Facebook in 2018. 

Sheera Frenkel reports on disinformation, social media, and new internet threats from San Francisco for the New York Times. Previously, she spent over a decade in the Middle East as a foreign correspondent, reporting for BuzzFeed, NPR, the Times of London and McClatchy Newspapers.

Based in Washington, DC, Cecilia Kang covers technology and regulatory policy for the New York Times. Before joining the paper in 2015, she reported on technology and business for the Washington Post for ten years.