AI Imperfections and Other Online Misinformation
In this day and age, when many of us turn to the internet and especially social media for information, we are too often faced with misinformation and the shortcomings of AI (artificial intelligence). What are we to do about it? My answer is, disappointingly, “I don’t have an all-encompassing solution”. Included here are just two such examples.
I had a recent AI summary of Australian humpback dolphins on a post shared on a humble Facebook group I admin for citizen scientists on Bribie Island, Australia. Summarising Australian humpback dolphins (Sousa sahulensis) it presented the reader with an account of Atlantic humpback dolphins (S. teuszii) from half a world away.
Also, in recent days I stumbled across a social media link to a website with a poster of “Oceanic Dolphins” that contained numerous errors in the graphics and text. It is not my intention to ridicule those who create such sites; rather, as the Cetal Fauna facebook group is a discussion group, I thought that perhaps some of our members may want to reach out (in a civil manner of course) to those who control sites that contain misinformation.
Regarding illustrations that are used online, proper etiquette suggests that permission of illustrators should be sought before using such unacknowledged illustrations and credit should be extended publicly to the illustrator when permission has been granted. The Oceanic Dolphins poster depicted herein contains images belonging to at least three well-known and respected marine mammal illustrators (all are members of Cetal Fauna). There is no such thing as a perfect world but education is a key to improvement. We can assist others by providing feedback on inaccuracies. As a proofreader I notice simple typographic errors all too often and usually provide feedback to authors/editors as circumstances allow.
Graphics below show...
- the 'original' Oceanic Dolphins poster
- some of the inaccuracies contained in the Oceanic Dolphins poster. How many can you see?
- and the AI summary of 'Australian' humpback dolphins.
Links to the 'Oceanic Dolphins' site:
https://animalfact.com/oceanic-dolphin/
https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=pfbid0rXvVR6dKWgK4AQcsPUTSShC4722TJC1GffTcn8nMU2pLd8rSYuGYbqJQibc8beDYl&id=61566933689327