DEV Community

Cover image for Opinions wanted: how do we identify AI misinformation?
Jason St-Cyr
Jason St-Cyr

Posted on • Originally published at jasonstcyr.com on

Opinions wanted: how do we identify AI misinformation?

I’m curious as to how others are tackling this issue: How do we get AI users to know that AI is giving them garbage?

For those of us who have years of experience dealing with misinformation, but also a whole lot of experience with actual true facts, there’s a bit of “spidey-sense” that allows you to notice that something seems off. If it’s an area you are well-versed in, you can straight up tell it’s wrong. How do you deal with it when you move into a job/task you aren’t familiar with?

Folks who are junior level workers right now have this the worst because they don’t have a bank of experience to rely on to help with this, but I’ve hit this recently while I’ve been using AI to build out some stuff with Phaser. I don’t know anything about this, and very little front-end building experience in general, so I’m relying on the AI completely to know how to do things.

When things go wrong, I can leverage my experience to debug and get an idea of where the issue might be, but I can’t tell by looking at a response whether the tools are doing the right thing or not. I asked it to modularize some code and it gave a seemingly plausible structure and started filling things out… and left some of the files it created as blank. That was an obvious red flag, but I was then left in the situation of having no idea what it just did with the code and what it removed and lost, or even if it would work at all. (SPOILERS: IT DID NOT).

So how are you tackling this? How do we train up on identifying AI garbage in areas we don’t have experience in?

Do your career a big favor. Join DEV. (The website you're on right now)

It takes one minute, it's free, and is worth it for your career.

Get started

Community matters

Top comments (0)

👋 Kindness is contagious

Immerse yourself in a wealth of knowledge with this piece, supported by the inclusive DEV Community—every developer, no matter where they are in their journey, is invited to contribute to our collective wisdom.

A simple “thank you” goes a long way—express your gratitude below in the comments!

Gathering insights enriches our journey on DEV and fortifies our community ties. Did you find this article valuable? Taking a moment to thank the author can have a significant impact.

Okay