It is worth the Ministry of Digitization considering developing its own application, which would be an alternative to the X portal – says Dr. Hab. Tomasz Michalak from the National Center for Research and Development. In his opinion, his own platform will be an effective safeguard in the fight against disinformation spread on commercial portals.
Ph.D. Tomasz Michalak, leader of the “AI for security” research team at the IDEAS NCBR research and development center, in an interview with PAP referred to the announcement of the Norwegian police regarding liquidation of its official channels on Elon Musk's X platform and creating your own mobile application for communication with the public. When asked whether state institutions in Poland should also consider creating their own communication applications, he replied that “the idea is good” and had already been raised before, e.g. in connection with the tragedy in Przewodów.
– It is worth the Ministry of Digitization considering creating its own application as an alternative to existing commercial portals. This would effectively protect communication with the public against disinformation. However, the problem should be looked at holistically, Michalak pointed out. He emphasized that Poland faces the challenge of creating an entire digital ecosystem supporting not only individual security, but the resilience of the entire society and the state.
– There should not be too many applications in this type of digital ecosystem, they should not be islands independent of each other, created without order and composition, without a top-down plan – one for one ministry, another for another, another for the police, ambulance service, fire brigade, or civil defense – he emphasized.
He added that this kind of thing the application should only be used for communication between the government, services and the public in exceptional situations and “it should not be a platform for agitation or political struggle.” As he said, the point is not to “create a new digital medium similar to commercial portals, but a tool to increase individual security and the resilience of society and the state.”
An alternative to X for crisis situations
The leader of the research team at the center operating at the National Center for Research and Development explained that such an application, which is a trusted source of information, may be particularly important in situations of mass threat, natural disaster or armed conflict. As he said, after the explosion war in Ukraine it turned out that society's resistance to false messages, e.g. about the president leaving Kiev Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky in the first days of the war “was crucial to maintaining the military effort.” – If the Russian disinformation campaign had not been stopped, Kiev could have fallen, he said.
In his opinion The Russian side uses commercial portals very effectively for disinformation attackswhich we also feel more and more in Poland. – For example, after the outbreak of the war, when hundreds of thousands of war refugees crossed our border, the scale of spreading Russian disinformation about Ukrainians in Poland was enormous. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to counteract this type of attacks, because many people unknowingly share false information, Michalak noted. He added that artificial intelligence can help fight this problem – AI-based solutions are being developed that are relatively effective in limiting the spread of disinformation.
AI as a tool to fight disinformation
The expert recalled the works of prof. Piotr Sankowski, who – as he said – as part of his scientific activity, created a tool based on artificial intelligence that runs an account on the X platform and automatically reacts to Russian disinformation, i.e. detects it and then writes posts in real time that correct it. – Prof. Sankowski and his team showed that if false information is flagged as disinformation and corrected very quickly, its reach significantly decreases. A human cannot react so quickly, artificial intelligence can, he said.
He added that the project showed the effectiveness of the technology, but was carried out on a “relatively small scale” and focused on the issue of Ukrainian refugees in Poland. In his opinion, for it to be a general tool for counteracting disinformation attacks on commercial portals, e.g. the ministry or the Scientific and Academic Computer Network (NASK) would have to be interested in the topic.
– The development of this type of solutions requires expenditure, constant monitoring and improvement, because the enemy is constantly looking for weak points and changing the method of attack. Nevertheless, the Ukrainian experience shows how important it is to create trusted channels of communication with the public in a crisis situation and counteract disinformation. In the current situation, we should pay special attention to these issues, he emphasized.
At the end of October, the police from Norway said that instead of profiles on the former Twitter, she created her own mobile application Politiloggen, which provides information previously published on social media. She emphasized that her own application will help avoid fraudsters using fake profiles or spreading disinformation, and police messages will not be used to unauthorizedly build AI resources belonging to former Twitter.
IDEAS NCBR was established by the National Center for Research and Development and belongs to the NCBR Group. It is a research and development center operating in the field of artificial intelligence and digital economy, which is intended to support the development of these technologies in Poland by creating a platform connecting the academic and business communities.
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