AI is impacting every part of our lives—and we need to start paying more attention.
Watch this eye-opening conversation with Dr. Filippo Menczer, Professor of Informatics and Computer Science at Indiana University whose research explores how social bots, algorithms, and artificial intelligence manipulate what we see, believe, and share online.
We discuss:
How AI-powered bots can manufacture the illusion that thousands of real people agree with something
Why our cognitive biases and psychological need to belong make all of us vulnerable to misinformation—regardless of level of intelligence or education
How AI is being weaponized to manipulate public opinion and distort what we believe
Why empathy can help us challenge echo chambers and understand people who think differently
If you care about trust, political divides, and protecting yourself from misinformation in the age of AI—you don't want to miss this conversation.
00:00 Preview
01:00 Episode introduction
03:39 About Dr. Filippo Menczer
05:42 Fil’s backstory
08:08 Fil’s fake news experiment that revealed why misinformation is profitable
11:33 How social bots manipulate what appears popular on social media
16:40 Why cognitive biases and our desire to belong make us vulnerable to online manipulation
22:52 How social media filters our world and deepens political divides
27:46 Why limited exposure to different perspectives reinforces our biases and distorts how we see others
33:01 Are our phones actually listening to our conversations?39:58 What researchers discovered about 1,000+ ChatGPT-controlled social media accounts
43:14 Why Botometer was built to detect fake social media accounts
47:56 The risks of AI-generated bots that are difficult to distinguish from humans
50:40 Are we heading toward a global misinformation crisis?
54:55 Should children under 16 be banned from social media?
59:40 Why exposure to opposing views can actually deepen polarization
01:03:35 Dr. Filippo Menczer’s Purposeful Empathy story
Episode #10 of Empathy in the Age of AI part II, a special 25-part series: https://tinyurl.com/exyw2nua
CONNECT WITH FILIPPO
✩ LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/fmenczer/
✩ Website https://cnets.indiana.edu/fil
CONNECT WITH ANITA
✩ Email purposefulempathy@gmail.com
✩ Website https://www.anitanowak.com
✩ Buy a copy of Purposeful Empathy http://tiny.cc/PurposefulEmpathyCA
✩ LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/anitanowak/
✩ Instagram https://tinyurl.com/anitanowakinstagram
✩ Podcast Audio https://tinyurl.com/PurposefulEmpathyPodcast
✩ Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/anitanowak.bsky.social
SHOW NOTES
✩ Hoaxy: A Platform for Tracking Online Misinformation https://www.researchgate.net/publication/301841797_Hoaxy_A_Platform_for_Tracking_Online_Misinformation
✩ BotOrNot: A System to Evaluate Social Bots https://www.researchgate.net/publication/312635179_BotOrNot_A_System_to_Evaluate_Social_Bots
✩ Exposure to social engagement metrics increases vulnerability to misinformation https://www.researchgate.net/publication/343213021_Exposure_to_social_engagement_metrics_increases_vulnerability_to_misinformation
✩ Botometer 101: social bot practicum for computational social scientists https://www.researchgate.net/publication/362825797_Botometer_101_social_bot_practicum_for_computational_social_scientists
Video edited by Jad Misri, Green Horizon Studio
