The 19th-century English preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon said that a lie travels around the world while the truth is still putting on its boots.
The Leaders Prize at True North is hoping artificial intelligence can give truth a chance to catch up.
The problem of fake news and misinformation prevents people from making informed decisions, ultimately jeopardizing the integrity of democracy.
That’s the problem Canadian teams have a year to solve using artificial intelligence. The team that best leverages the power of machine learning to quickly fact-check claims and stop fake news before it spreads will land a $1-million award called the Leaders Prize at True North.
“We believe this problem threatens our civilization . . . It’s used as a weapon by companies, by nation states,” David Stein, co-founder and Managing Partner of the Leaders Fund, said in announcing the problem teams will work to solve on the first day of True North 2019 to cheers and applause from the crowd. “When we don’t know what to believe or what to trust, it causes a lot of turmoil in our civilization.”
While for many years human fact-checkers have debunked false reports, the process is expensive and too time-consuming given the ease of publishing misinformation online and spreading it on social media.
Fake news – typically created to generate advertising revenue or advance a certain political or social agenda – is so widespread, it’s becoming difficult to distinguish it from real news, said Communitech CEO Iain Klugman.
“Misinformation is having such an impact globally, from influencing elections to fundamentally shaping people’s public opinion,” he said. “It’s such a pervasive issue and impacts so much of our lives that we thought it was the right place to start.”
There are two phases to the competition. In the first phase, individuals or groups will have to use artificial intelligence to identify facts and whether they are true or false. The second phase requires contestants to prove whether the information they identified in phase one is true or false.
The competition is open to all Canadian residents, including international students. Though individuals or groups could only begin registering at www.leadersprize.com after the problem was revealed today, the competition has been creating buzz since it was announced in November. The prize was co-founded by the Schulich Foundation, the Leaders Fund and Communitech, with the University of Waterloo as the academic partner. Additional partners include CIBC, Cisco, Desjardins, PolitiFact, Thomson Reuters and the Vector Institute.
“The response we’ve seen has been significant. People are really excited about this idea. People have been very impressed that the Schulich Foundation and ourselves are standing up and listening. They feel it’s the right thing to do,” said Klugman.
The prize money will come from the Schulich Foundation. The winner will be crowned at the True North conference in 2020.
As the largest AI competition in Canada, the goal of the Leaders Prize at True North is to solve major societal or industry problems using AI. The hope is that the prize will inspire young people to think about a career in AI and help connect AI talent to career opportunities in Canada.
Challenges are also an incentive — a lure to get people to show up and think big, said Klugman.
“Challenges are powerful. They’re a way to influence people to focus on one issue.”
He pointed to the XPRIZE in the U.S., which has handed out millions of dollars in prize money since it began in 1994 and also spurred the creation of several companies.
Canada has a strong track record in AI and machine learning, though much of the current work is research-based, said Klugman.
“This is a way to get people to think about applying AI,” he said.
“It brings a focus to solving a very specific problem.”
A catalyst for change, the Leaders Prize at True North is a way of inspiring Canadian entrepreneurs to take more risks and pursue larger markets, while tackling more difficult problems, said Stein.
“Oftentimes we hear from our prime minister and others that the world needs more Canada . . . When we think of giving the world more Canada, we think about giving the world more of what’s in this room,” he said of the tech and entrepreneurial community.
Stein said he’s looking forward to seeing what’s created from the competition.
“Let’s make something great happen in Canada,” he said.
