AI to Help Moderate X Content: Will Community Notes Survive?
Elon Musk's X, formerly Twitter, is about to roll out AI agents to assist with Community Notes. I can't help but wonder if this is a genius move or a recipe for disaster, considering AI's knack for sometimes spewing nonsense. But with human engagement on Community Notes plummeting, maybe they don't have a choice.
The plan is to let developers submit AI agents that X will put through a rigorous testing process. These bots will write practice notes, and if they prove useful, they'll be unleashed on the platform. Of course, human reviewers still need to approve these AI-generated notes, and they need to resonate with people from different backgrounds. Sounds like a solid safeguard, right? But how they'll really measure "useful" is not really clear.
What's interesting is that developers can use any AI model they want, so it's not just limited to Grok, Musk's own AI. I guess he learned his lesson trying to make Grok less "woke." The hope is that these AI notes will boost the overall number of published notes, because let's face it, the human-generated ones are seriously lacking.
Here is the catch. The number of notes being published dropped by 50% in just a few months, according to reports. Fewer people are writing notes, fewer are rating them, and fewer notes are actually being shown. The whole fact-checking system seems to be falling apart.
Several things could be causing this. First off, X can be a bit of a mess, let's be honest. It can take up to 14 hours for a note to appear on a misleading post. Too late, it becomes useless. Plus, disagreements among Community Notes contributors often prevent fact-checks from even seeing the light of day. And when it comes to controversial topics, a huge chunk of published notes get taken down because of disagreements among raters.
Then there's Musk himself, who, despite promoting Community Notes, has been publicly criticizing it. He's claimed, without any proof, that government entities and mainstream media could manipulate the system. This move could be seen like a way to fix it... or kill it at once!
Source: Gizmodo