Check Your Facts

The thought of universal knowledge would have been nothing but a wishful fantasy thirty years ago and in some ways that did not stop being true. Knowledge implies accuracy, and the information you see online has more of a chance to be inaccurate than accurate. This is why fact checking has become more important than ever, especially when it involves AI. 

Mr. Timothy Skinner, an economics and world history teacher, told me the ways he has taught his students how to fact check.

“If you find a source and you’re not sure about it, you could do a google search and you look up the source.” He opens his desktop and starts looking at USA Today’s Wikipedia profile. 

“I’m looking for any kind of controversies or issues on the source, because a lot of times it’s on this kind of stuff. USA Today looks like a bland source but no real controversies here. That’s usually what I’ve taught my students to do in the past.”

When I brought up AI with Mr. Skinner and my second source, Drew Lansford, a creative writing student with a knack for research, for their responses were somewhat differing: “If AI is collecting sources and then summarizing them for you.” Skinner claims, “What if the sources they’re getting are not valid? Lets say me and you create a website called thenews.com, and all we do is spread false information, but no one knows yet. AI could pick up our information and say, according to this source, candy prevents diabetes.” 

Drew said this on AI: “I think it’s a useful tool for gathering sources on things. I don’t think you should take everything. Never cite AI, that’s a terrible idea. It’s not there to research for you. It’s there to give you a start, because sometimes it’s hard to know what to look for. You should not be using it to write your paper for you.” 

When you are researching something it is always safer to check the biases and controversies of your source, and even doing a bit of meta-research (the research of the methods research) on how to find quality and relevant sources. When it comes to fact checking, there is no such thing as an extreme because accuracy is a big step in truth.