and Google similarly launched a $300 million
News Initiative as well as using AI to reduce
the promotion of hoax videos and fake news
on YouTube, but whether that will be enough
remains to be seen. Human language and news
stories are complicated in ways that computers
have difficulty dealing with right now, and
any automated method of fact-checking risks
reflecting the biases of the programmers who
created it, causing problems of their own.
THE FUTURE
Whilst our selfie-obsessed, fake-news-
consuming society may seem all doom and
gloom from the outside, the truth is that there
are benefits to seeing our world through a
lens. Social media, though often criticized,
has informed the world of incredible stories
of both heroism and injustice, and being part
of a global story will help us as we attempt to
combat climate change. The reaction to Greta
Thunberg’s speech at the United Nations
Climate Action talk was immense on both sides
of the argument, demonstrating the value of
open democratic spheres such as Twitter, which
is an essential sounding board in our uncertain
political, environmental and economic times.
That’s without mentioning the huge potential
of experiencing the world through augmented
reality - an expanded view where we can access
real-time information to inform us of the world
around us. Imagine putting on Apple’s rumored
AR Glasses to take a trip around the planet to
see news happening before your very eyes, and
using Siri to ask questions about the protests
in Hong Kong or the problems in the Amazon
Rainforest? AR also offers huge potential in