Invisible Influence: Faux Media, AI Opacity and Information Integrity with Lisa Main

Miah Hammond-Errey (00:26) What happens to a democracy when people can no longer agree on what's real? Lisa Main, welcome to the technology and security podcast. Lisa Main (00:34) Thanks for having me. Miah Hammond-Errey (00:34) Lisa has spent two decades in newsrooms and produced award winning investigations from Sydney, Washington and the Middle East. She helped build ABC produced Defending Democracy with former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and was a fellow at Oxford Reuters Institute. Now she advises executives on what happens when narratives become weapons, as the founder of Maine Bureau. So Lisa, national security conversations often mention the media, but we rarely examine it. Which shifts in the media landscape matter most and what do you think the national security and business community are still underestimating? Lisa Main (01:06) Yeah, I think in the last 10 years what we've seen is our media environment move from something that was largely national, mostly regulated and mostly transparent. It was also an opt-in environment. We're now in an information environment that is mostly opaque. And I'm talking about not only the kind of architecture of the kind of information system, so programmatic advertising, social media algorithms, recommendation systems, but also now with the release of generative AI, these very convincing fake accounts with full warmed up backstories. not only, you you've got a very opaque system, you've got very convincing and opaque kind of influence content manipulation moving around on it. And the other thing is I think we now that we have I think it's about 57 % of Australians and I'll talk from Australia because I'm get their news from social media. In that mix it's not like mainstream media has gone on that they're getting, mainstream media on social media. They are also getting this huge swathe of what I kind of call faux media. So if you go onto Facebook now, there are all these kind of faux news site, Aussie Pulse, like there are literally, I think I've counted about 30 of them in the last few months and they use the tropes of mainstream media. Like one of them looks News 24, the other one looks like the Australian, like they understand And so if you're receiving your news from social media, it just gets harder to decipher, you know, what is mainstream media and, you know, what is, you know, something that's saying it's news, but has no kind of access, no accountability mechanism, no transparency, and very likely is not even being produced within Australia. So there's, you know, you've got this kind of devolution, I say, of like what is actually happening happening or what news actually is. And I think we're sleepwalking into this. And even when I talk to lot of executives, that's one thing that they're like, is that news? It could be to somebody who is getting their news from social media. Miah Hammond-Errey (03:20) The shift of social media taking over, traditional media is a global one. What you're talking about there though takes us back even further to what is the purpose of media and news and fact and truth and democracy? Can you give us your take? Lisa Main (03:37) I think that try and run democracy without facts and without some shared sense of what the truth of the matter is and everybody will have you know some disagreements at the edges or their own interpretations of it it's never going to be a very kind of pristine environment but there is enough shared understanding and kind of confidence in the fact base. that we can collectively make decisions. So we vote somebody in and we are able to say, well, the budget says this, that's unacceptable to me in this next election, I am now voting you out. So, you know, it's a very basic premise for me. Like if you do not have a fact base or a shared fact base or a reliable fact base or a trusted fact base, your democracy is in trouble. Miah Hammond-Errey (04:24) And where do you think we are sitting on that on that spectrum of having having those foundations? Lisa Main (04:31) I think Australia has fared better than other democracies and I'm looking mostly at the US at the moment. However, I have really in the last six months seen a big push and I think that... the fact that not only we don't have a regulated news environment in the online, in the social media sphere. So if you want to contest the fact, you can't pick up the phone and ring a journalist. I mean, you can pick up the phone and ring a journalist. You can't pick up the phone and ring a bot or ring a Facebook group that's got its admin sitting in Sri Lanka. So I think we're sleepwalking into that part of it. And I think that's dangerous for democracy because how many people can honestly answer the question, how do I know what I know? You know, and so you have this, think the EU did a really great report that said, you know, we're moving from echo chambers into this kind of concept of fraction realities, where we have multiple incompatible subjective. realities. If you are trying to have a consensus debate about anything, that's a really different environment to be operating in. Miah Hammond-Errey (05:41) Yeah, absolutely. And that's a deep concern of mine is these sort of alternate realities. If we don't share a reality, how do we share facts? I think often there is a a lack of discussion about the fact that our information environment, including news, but also social media and other people, form a part of how we perceive information, understand the world around us. I want to go to a segment which is called the contest spectrum. What's a cooperation, competition, or conflict do you see coming in the next year? Lisa Main (06:09) I suspect Australia will fold back on copyright and will pursue an opt-out pathway to train AI models here. And I think that will be both cooperation and conflict at the same time. And if you play that out a little bit, I'm not sure it's the... unknown consequences of what that could produce. I don't think we fully explored. Miah Hammond-Errey (06:31) There's a lot of resistance, obviously, to that pathway. What do you think might happen if we do roll back our copyright protections? Lisa Main (06:41) Yeah, the kind of the less harmful version of that is that, you know, creators, journalists, newsrooms all opt out. And so, you know, their material is not used to train models. The net result of that is everyone's, you know, little bit misses out on a little bit of what maybe could have been income from copyright licenses. We don't really know, the models be better or worse off? Who knows? Most of it's been kind of lifted already anyway, so that's hard to say. if we do go down that model, my concern is that it's a value. Like we have said, to people who do huge lifetimes worth of research to write books, to kind of level up a piece of history in a way to enable us to see it in a way we haven't been able to see it before, to be able to understand, kind of who we are and, our place in the world. Who would pursue that? that career anymore. and newsrooms are also seeing already big dips from advertising revenue as the AI produces the overview, but very few people click through to the actual article. So, you know, that's just more pressure on the model for journalism, which we don't yet have a sustainable model for journalism, for quality journalism. Miah Hammond-Errey (08:06) Is there an alternative, to journalism in communicating facts and truths and opinions, investigations in a democracy, Lisa Main (08:15) This is something I'm thinking really deeply about at the moment. So, you know, pull back to first basis. I mean, I think what I do like about journalism and my experience of it isn't so much the act of the journalism itself, it's the institution that sits around it and the ability for somebody. And I was a beneficiary of this. I was an ABC cadet. I could learn from others on the job. And that is... incredible so that by the time you're age 35 you can work at phenomenal pace in a 24-hour breaking news environment in any kind of crisis situation and if you're not practicing those muscles you lose them. And so what happens to a country if we hit a crisis and this, this happens in every crisis scenario I sit in is everyone's like, maybe the influences have got to become better journalists. I'm like, okay. Well, like first question, do the influences actually want to be journalists? You know, what the underlying motives for being influences? Secondly, who controls? And you know, we're seeing this with Meta at the moment. Meta has full control over what gets surfaced and what doesn't. Now they mostly don't interfere in that but we have seen allegations that they are interfering with that in the local Brazilian election and in the US with the suspension of their Nokings Instagram account. this is a question that I'm really taking into next year. Are there people and individuals who are really fantastic content creators and can they have kind of micro business models, a sub stack, a podcast, you know, and make a great contribution to a healthy democratic discourse? Yes, I absolutely agree and would love for that to exist and to flourish. However, my question then happens, what happens if we have no kind of journalism institutions, like big institutions with big kind of distribution hardware in a crisis? Imagine a really intense bushfire Miah Hammond-Errey (10:24) What does that look like for Lisa Main (10:26) season. Miah Hammond-Errey (10:26) Right. And what does that look like for people trying to get information, get facts? one of the challenges about influencers and kind of smaller groups is they're ideologically driven. So people attracted to them because they share the ideology or they generally share, you know, interests Lisa Main (10:45) Yeah. Miah Hammond-Errey (10:45) rather than believing that they're getting the facts on all of the issues. Like they're often specialists in health or in whatever it is that the person started to follow them. for. and so it's a different model rather than a trusted institution. trust in media institutions is in free fall. what does Lisa Main (11:03) Yeah. Miah Hammond-Errey (11:03) it look like right now? Lisa Main (11:06) It's in free fall. We see, you know, there are moments and I mean, everybody talks about COVID. When COVID happened, people knew to switch on to the mainstream media, news, TV bulletins and television is holding up. The TV bulletins, the news bulletins are actually holding. But the rest of it like printers nose diving and Yeah, we had a big discussion about this today, like what is causing that dive in trust? And I think, you know, we don't have any clear evidence on precisely what it is. We can guess from, you know, make a pretty good educated guess that the fact that there is... a very noisy information environment. It's just really hard to kind of figure out what's real and what's not. It's very hot. everybody, you know, with the arrival of social media, everybody, including mainstream media organizations, learned that the algorithms reward, you know, kind of discord, fear, hate, all these kind of really heated emotional states. So I think that people get exhausted by that and we're living also in an information flood that we haven't probably experienced since the introduction of the printing press. It's just too much. So the cognitive load on somebody, before you even bring generative AI in and deep fakes and all of that, Miah Hammond-Errey (12:26) Yeah. Yeah. Lisa Main (12:28) it's a lot. It's just a lot and people have got busy lives. They're stretched. It's like I just... want to know what's going on and that's becoming really hard. Miah Hammond-Errey (12:36) You you've absolutely raised something so fascinating because obviously, whilst there's been lots of issues in mainstream media for for quite some time in terms of you know a decline in in viewership readership, in terms of AI specifically, you know, we we're currently in this discussion about false content and and moderation, but I think there is much deeper damage that AI is doing to how people actually relate to information, like our epistemic kind of connection to to understanding and to each other, that relational component. Can you talk me through how you see that from a from a news and media perspective? And what I'm really keen to to understand is what are those things that we absolutely have to take stock of? And you've you've raised one, the algorithmic content, because even if you improve trust in institutions, if they're forced to play an algorithmic game on social media, that's not going to be a a net benefit for everyone. You know, it's that's that's seriously problematic. So, you know, what is AI doing to how we relate to information and each other and what can what does that mean for news media? Lisa Main (13:48) Yeah, so I should, I agree, I don't think that, you know, in a crisis situation that, you know, social media is going to be a very healthy environment to be pushing breaking news or news that's existing in its correct context. The voluntary, we have voluntary codes in Australia and you know, there's some policy talk around, you know, obligations. But again, it's just a voluntary code in Australia. And I actually, I don't think that they actually have the workflows in place to be able to operationalise, you know, what a newsroom can operationalise when there is a crisis breaking news situation. that aside, coming to AI, I'm really looking at, if you think about the integrity of the information supply chain, and it's at multiple points, and this is where I think people are talking about this concern around epistemic collapse. is so if we see if we start at the kind of at the user at the end case for AI if I go into you know any of my chat bots and ask them you know what's just happening in the news I will get a very terrible response if I ask them what happened last week to give me some context yeah I might get a much better response I'll certainly get a very confident one but even if they put sources, even if they attribute some sources, it's impossible to know through the neural network what bit of the answer was attributed to that particular source. And so, like when I worked in investigations, you have to be able to do that. You have to be able to say, I can use this particular word with confidence because it's traced back to this piece of evidence. And you would go through, you know, 40 minute investigation scripts and do that with every line of script. Now that doesn't exist in a neural network. So that's a lot to lose. The second thing is, and this is, Carl Miller has been doing some of this work out of Demos, is that we are seeing that there is foreign interference through the large language models and that some large language models, to answer particular questions, will just pick up sanctioned Russian content and not one guardrail will kick in. So it's, think, you know, on the receiving end, know that what you're receiving, there is no clean line of integrity back to its source. And that's because of the nature of the neural network. And then there's just the kind of mashup of news, Miah Hammond-Errey (16:29) yeah. Lisa Main (16:30) you know, and just like the lack of context and accurate context and time. And, you know, I say all of this as somebody who uses AI quite a bit. But yeah, I just think if you were to go kind of line by line through things. Again, it's very difficult to make that match of, can say this because of this piece of evidence. We lose that. Miah Hammond-Errey (16:59) It's so hard to take it all the way back to, you know, how is it that we first create mental models and how is it that we actually come to understand things and integrate them into the things we already know? Because in the current environment, almost all of the professionals that exist now obviously learnt these skills before AI, and most of us learnt them, you know, at least in some part in an analogue sense. And so for many of us, the skills of integrating new information, you know, we'll we're harking back to how we we had information in books or in you know in kind of analog forms where we'd have to handwrite. And we actually don't have a lot of, you know, long-term research on what it is like to learn those skills in a digital environment and then what it's like to learn those skills from AI. And so I think it's a really challenging it it's a really challenging conversation because how is it changing the way that we understand information and we can see that it changes our own way of understanding information because we don't as you said people are in overload. They don't have time to source check and fact check. you know, wh which actually brings me to a point. Like you helped found ABC's fact check. And I've heard you say elsewhere that we can't fact check our way out of this. So what do we do instead? Lisa Main (18:26) Yes, so I, we can't I say we can't fact check our way out of this because I think unless we address the plumbing, unless we address the pipes on which our information travels and how those pipes are kind of weighted, whether it be the neural network, whether we have more interoperability, if it's social media, you know, more transparency around how algorithms and recommendation systems are working or more transparency into programmatic advertising. I don't think that facts, first of all, facts aren't just, they're not gonna get surfaced. We know enough to know that kind of... Miah Hammond-Errey (19:05) They're not the sexy sensational news. Lisa Main (19:09) The vegetables are not going to kind of, know, it's the French fries that are coming up. So, and that was true with ABC fact check. Like we knew we weren't going to be leading the news. We weren't going to be the big investigations, but we also knew that in a fast pace and it came out of, you know, the arrival of 24 seven news that journalists were going to be more stretched to be outputting all the time to multiple kind of TV, to radio, to online, that it would be helpful to have a unit that was really committed to digging deep into some of the know big contested claims around you know budget outcomes or whatever the kind of fact check was. So that's why I don't think we can fact check our way out of it. That said I did read recently the Ukraine's kind of handbook on their information resilience operation. I've got it right here actually. And I was tickled pink, absolutely thrilled to see fact checking units sitting at the centre of their resilience operation. So I don't, you know, for a second say that, you know, we're moving to a world without facts, let them go. They're absolutely going to be a fundamental part of the stack, but we're going to need a full stack. And that stack, you know, includes so much and we haven't even got started. Miah Hammond-Errey (20:25) Yeah, absolutely. And I think the Ukrainian experience, you know, I've been working with some Ukrainian colleagues here in Europe. And y you know, obviously the Ukrainian experience is born out of an existential crisis. I mean, they're very literally fighting for their lives and their nationhood. So it is, you know, it is an absolutely different scenario. But there are so many things through the way that they share information, w both domestically and internationally, that I think is a really That I think Australia and other democracies can learn a lot from. Lisa Main (20:59) Yeah, and I think actually, to your question before about is there a way that we can operationalise in a crisis using social media, using the information environment we are currently engaged in, I think Ukraine's got the best potential pathway forward there. Miah Hammond-Errey (21:16) I mean, I just want to be clear, I'm an advocate for improving the quality of the information environment we have. you know, I really Lisa Main (21:21) Yeah. Miah Hammond-Errey (21:21) genuinely believe systemic change is necessary so that we can all equally participate in an information environment that is you know, that that has the kind of foundations of fact and accessibility and you know, supports the values of of democracy, you know, that that we engage with each other in a respectful, kind way, you know, that we listen to alternative information. I think that's one of the benefits of Australian democracy. We have to have defined what our values look like. So I I'm a hundred percent in favor of improving the ecosystem as well. Lisa Main (21:56) And I can give you an example of what is really interesting to look at. What are the, how are the manipulation tactics changing? Because often when I kind of talk to executives, they'll look, I'll show them an example and they'll be like, but some of that is real or that was real for, that was real. That was factually correct in this great context, you know, four weeks ago. And what we're seeing is it's really clever manipulation. One example is we'll have a politician, I won't say who it is, who is having a big rant about a particular event that happened in February. But every time something related to that event comes up, this post gets pushed out on multiple, multiple Facebook pages with no context that this was recorded. ordered way back in February and it's kind of attributed to the current events. And so is that is that disinformation is that misinformation? It was accurate. It was, you know, when it was set back in February. But now the context has changed. It's no longer sitting in its correct context. But you can see an operation of, you know, hundreds of Facebook pages pushing out that same piece of content. And so something's going on there. Miah Hammond-Errey (23:08) Yeah, absolutely. And and and if that was behavior that was you know, undertaken by a state actor, we would call that for foreign interference. You've worked with you've worked closely with former leaders and prime ministers. What conversations or insights change the way you think about democracy and information? Lisa Main (23:29) Yeah, so there was one, and this was about four years ago now, and it was a conversation with a CEO from Silicon Valley, who before the meeting got underway and just very casually said, yeah, I think, you know, I think the days of democracy in the US are numbered. I kind of, you know, pivoted my head, yes. Tell me more. And he just moved on to the next conversation. And I was like, wow, how can you say that? How can you be so relaxed about that? I think the days of democracy as we know it in the US are numbered. and that just did not seem to bother this person. And sometimes it's not what people say, but it's how they say it. And I think it was how they said it that said it all to me. And then, you know, it's interesting. people are very prescient sometimes and they don't realise it. Miah Hammond-Errey (24:25) Yeah, when you watch when you think back to how situations have unfolded since you can see that they saw something. Lisa Main (24:31) Exactly. one of those was, and it was kind of comes back to your kind of cognitive resilience work, is I was outside in, in outside Torah prison in Egypt. And it was when Peter Greste was being sentenced to seven years in prison, but there were three of them. And I was outside having conversation to one of their fiancees. And she turned to me and said, you know, all of my friends think he's a terrorist. And I kind of looked at her and went, We all know that's absurd. And she started to cry. And she said to me, you know, what I am so ashamed about was that if I didn't know better, you know, if I didn't love him, I would believe it too, because it's easy. And I think back then we didn't understand, know, the term disinformation was only just kind of starting to surface. And we didn't understand just how powerful that kind of that short cutting of our cognitive heuristics is when, you know, it becomes easy to believe a lie. Miah Hammond-Errey (25:25) Yeah, I mean, this is one of the challenging things that I have so often, when I talk to people about the impact of our information environment, where we get our information, you know, the the sort of values and beliefs that are imbued in in that process, many people are like, just being able to choose information is good. diversity is a net benefit rather than seeing the potential for kind of malign influence or interference or a a process which is opaque. And I don't always have a great answer for why that's so deeply concerning and yet it feels existential. I wonder how you handle that. Lisa Main (26:03) They kind of, I go back to this kind of analogy where I say, if you were a little kid in a lolly shop and you had lollies all around you and everyone said, you can eat whatever you want. What would you eat? you know, well I'd eat the chocolate and then I'm like, how would you feel after it? Well, I'd probably feel pretty sick. And it's like that with information, like it's it's healthy your body, but just the kind of healthy information habits and the healthy information that you choose and that you have to really actively seek out is not the sugar ridden information that's kind of coming at you with breaking news, flashing lights. So. I know, I kind of take it back to either like an analogy around sugar hits and health or an analogy around, you know, pollution in the air that you can't see it, but you're breathing it in. And so at some point you will become unhealthy. Miah Hammond-Errey (26:58) What's super interesting about both those examples, as you mentioned them, is that they are both really heavily regulated environments. So obviously, sugar for kids has been really heavily regulated, like air pollution is also really heavily regulated. And what we have done with information is go, as you started this conversation with, we've gone from a really well-regulated environment to something which is diffuse and unregulated. I'm not suggesting we regulate everything, although Australians are more prone to regulation than elsewhere, granted. Lisa Main (27:30) You Miah Hammond-Errey (27:30) something I do appreciate though, actually. I would love to see a place where we can access, high quality news, on on news that is occurring in your country, in your location, wherever you are, which does have, you know, heavily standardized systems so that you can be confident that that the person writing the news has checked the facts, that that instead of just posting that, you know, there's a riot happening, in Rome on cost of living, that they've actually talked to the police, that they've actually gone down and spoken to the protesters, that that they have a sense of integrity, like you said, about that supply chain. I feel like we're heading much further away from that. than towards that. What do you think we need to do to build up the institutions and support them? Lisa Main (28:21) For me, I mean, I'm a bit of an institutionalist. That would be my bias. I think we've got a market failure now in quality journalism. And we've been trying to find revenue models and different models for 10 years. And some are succeeding at some level, but people, and I think Rory actually from... from the rest is politics articulated this very well the other day. He said, okay, we are podcasters, we are making heaps of money and our overheads are very low. We get on, we talk about things that have already been reported and fact checked and a newsroom has had to go through the work of getting something that wasn't on the record now on the record. And so what will, it's that... that problem of who is going to pay for the base and what does the base become? Does it become a data set that feeds a large language model? where do and what do those kinds of commercial arrangements look like? There are conversations about that. You know, I don't want to hang on to the past. I don't think that news as kind of quasi entertainment necessarily got us to a good place. And I have changed my views dramatically on that because, I was somebody, you know, for bleeds, it leads, I came through the full turn of that, very explosive journalism. Now I just want to be informed. I want to keep up. I want it to be accurate. I want it not to have a massive cognitive load. I want it to come to me and I want trust in it. And I think that's the big thing of we're asking people to do so much work just to hold basic trust in information that we used to be able to have. Maybe that is something that's really driving down trust. It's like, well, if you're making me work so hard to figure out if I can trust you at all, I'm out. Miah Hammond-Errey (30:14) What are some of the interdependencies and vulnerabilities between technology, information and security that you wish were better understood? Lisa Main (30:21) I wish that it was much better understood of what was driving this epidemic of low quality information. I wish that every boardroom I walked into or every executive leadership team I worked with already had some understanding of the underlying drivers and the mechanics of our information system because until they're addressed things won't improve, but every conversation I enter starts at the content layer. And we lose 30 minutes in the content layer. And so I kind of just want to get people under the hood very quickly. So that's something that I would like to be better understood. Miah Hammond-Errey (30:58) So when you say you want them to have a better understanding, are you saying of that kind of supply chain, of that kind of space for influence and opacity? Lisa Main (31:06) Yes, Miah Hammond-Errey (31:07) Yeah, okay. Lisa Main (31:08) who owns it? How transparent are the mechanisms that delivers that piece of information to you? How much agency do you have? What's your recourse if you want to contest a fact or a problem with that piece of reporting? So, yeah. Miah Hammond-Errey (31:25) as you know during my work here, I am deep diving into many of the psychological and cognitive processes. And it always astounds me how small our working memory really is. it's a handful of pieces of information, like it's four. and it amazes me because we think we can handle so much more, and yet actually what's happening is we're just degrading the capacity that we have around the outside. we're actually just offloading rather than, expanding our capacity. Lisa Main (31:55) Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And you know, my instincts at the moment, I want less, I want better quality, a lot better quality, but I want a lot less of it. And I don't have to do too much work. And I think it's really difficult because one of the solutions around it is media literacy. I think that media literacy is a good thing. I think people understanding manipulation tactics and strengthening critical thinking skills is a good thing. It's when the burden is all on the user to navigate as well as comprehend and absorb the information. I think we're asking too much. Miah Hammond-Errey (32:31) who should be responsible for the integrity of our information environment. but take us where it goes if nobody is. if we continue where we're at now, what does that look like? Lisa Main (32:42) Yeah, this is the million dollar question and it's such a good question. Somebody who I was talking to, a commissioner the other day, kind of handed and had an hour long briefing with them and she just looked at me and went, who owns this? And I said, that's a very good question. We don't have a good answer for that. Now, what does that look like if nobody owns it? Chaos theory. you need some discipline in the system to ensure that information isn't harmful, doesn't have serious harm, that it's not manipulative, that you can trace the integrity of it. So if it is, you know, completely AI generated, it would be good to know. You know, there are content credentials that you can use. So I think we need to get, you know, kind of What are the signals of trust we need and maybe regulate around those, you know? And accountability, think, you need transparency in the system, in the kind of, and when I say the system, the pipes, the machinery of which information moves. I think we know nothing about how it moves, how things are surfaced, how things are prioritized, recommendations, algorithms. I think it's fair to say we need to understand how these decisions are made. or if there's a complaint, to be able to audit that decision. Miah Hammond-Errey (34:06) Yeah. I think there's also a component there, in terms of accountability where, if we've got actors that are operating in ways that are, not consistent with our democracy, we need to actually be able to call it to account and stop that behavior. And that's part of the challenge really is that, you know, we actually need to hold organizations, platforms, and you know, even down to the individual influencer accountable. in ways that actually make our information environment easier for the individual to navigate. Lisa Main (34:36) Yeah, I agree. And I think, we don't know how influencers are making their money. They like, you know, a lot of influencers don't disclose that. So you don't know what their financial interests are. We know that, some influencers are often used by foreign state actors to push foreign interference. So, yeah, it's interesting. I hear that a lot from people saying, well, now that kind of journalism's over and all the kids are on social media, well, can't we just work with the influencers? I'm like, yes, but I think that's also very complicated and we need to think through this. Miah Hammond-Errey (35:08) if influencers are becoming a part of that information environment from a news perspective or from a fact perspective, then somehow we need to lessen the burden on the individual user to understand the fact. And as you say, put it back onto the system, whether that's the infrastructure or the organizations. Lisa Main (35:25) you know there's some kind of rudimentary instruments but we don't have a lot. Nothing that would kind of assure integrity and that's hard and that's why I you know I come back to that institutional model because that's how you you know at least it's a mechanism for ensuring process, accountability, transparency, and kind of systematic review of information. Miah Hammond-Errey (35:50) Yeah, I mean it's fascinating to think that influencers d have never had to, for example, you know, journalists learn what is a piece of fact, how do you verify it, how do you understand it, and how do you use it in reporting. and fascinatingly, no one else in our information ecosystem has had to go through that process. which I think needs rectifying at some level. Lisa Main (36:13) And I think journalists and academics certainly understand that facts are hard to pin down sometimes. They change over time, context. Yeah, correct, correct. And you Miah Hammond-Errey (36:19) Even and the more obvious it seems, the harder it is. Lisa Main (36:24) need nuance, you need context, you need all of these really important things that are lost in the two minute scroll. Yeah. Miah Hammond-Errey (36:31) let's go to a segment called Emerging Tech for Emerging Leaders. What do you see as the biggest shifts for leadership from the introduction of AI from an information perspective? Lisa Main (36:39) Yes, I think leaders need to really broaden the aperture of how they understand what a deep fake is and think more around the lines of information supply chains because only then can you really start to understand how integrity of information will be degraded. Yeah, I hear a lot of conversations around, there's deepfakes, there's deepfakes, and sometimes deepfakes are really funny and that's great, we don't want to lose those, and I agree, that's fine. But again, it's like take the system's view of what this technology can do so that we can kind of put in some... So at least kind of boundaries or some new knowledge and it's understanding that. And I appreciate it's a really hard time to be a leader right now because generative AI has unleashed a whole lot of capability and most of them are just kind of holding forward on cyber right now. And then you come in and do you want to talk about the information environment? You kind of watch their eyes. Miah Hammond-Errey (37:34) No right. Lisa Main (37:35) What now? And so, it's what now? And is there a solution? about it? If I do take the effort to understand this, what can I then do about it? Can it be solved? Miah Hammond-Errey (37:45) I was just gonna say, do you see leaders consistently underestimating the information risk and like what how? Lisa Main (37:50) Yeah, they don't understand it. Like every time I start a conversation, it starts at the content layer. And so I've had to work really hard into how do I frame up these conversations so that we get to talking about the mechanics of the information environment as quickly as possible. And, you know, most people who are, super smart people and domain experts. And so they can get there very quickly, but it actually has been a real kind of, not a storytelling challenge, but I've had to really work with visuals to go, how can I bring the invisible into the visible realm, the people? Like I've been working with information environments all my life, so it's my nature. But for people who haven't been, how do I in 30, 50 minutes kind of bring them into this environment and into the kind of absolutely profound changes that have been going on for the last 10 years? Miah Hammond-Errey (38:41) Okay, so last time we spoke you talked about the silent weapons of influence, which I think is what you're talking about here. Can you explain what you mean? Lisa Main (38:48) I think that is the most... dangerous thing about what is happening in the information environment is it's happening out of clear view. So, you know, every time you talk to any government, they talk about their resilience and their preparedness plans and you know, we need our institutions to be able to, you know, have coherence under pressure if there's an information attack and The state of play currently is that nobody can see how they are either being targeted or manipulated in the information environment unless you have access to some kind of sophisticated tools which can help you see the uncivil or see patterns in the information environment or you've got the time and skills to do kind of really deep open intelligence investigations to kind of uncover those kind of manipulation tactics and patterns. So yeah, I think that's a huge part of the job. is bringing the unseen into clear view. Miah Hammond-Errey (39:41) When you imagine democracy 10 years from now, with AI and possibly neurotechnologies woven through how people get information and form their opinions, what do you see and what do you want to be most different? Lisa Main (39:54) Gosh, I hopefully see, I'm gonna go for something hopeful here. In 10 years time, hopefully we've shaken through some of these immediate challenges. In 10 years time, I hope that there is a generation that is showing us how to use this technology. in a way that it harnesses information with integrity and transparency through the information supply chain. So I don't know what that looks like technically, but that would be the dream to go that, you know, I can put in that device or that earbud and I have a digital footprint, you know, throughout that information supply chain and I know where it's come from. all of those kind of elements of information integrity, I know they're imbued in that signal that's coming into my ear. So that would be my dream, that that's just normal. That would be my dream. I think we need to look at the power dynamics. Who owns the distribution of information? Who owns it? And then you know, what is the accountability mechanisms on the people who own the distribution of information? Because there's one thing I learned like really early as a journalist when you travel to places that are kind of suffering under really severe autocracies is that, you know, it's the information supply chains that they go after very early on. Miah Hammond-Errey (41:17) I'll put a couple of the reports you've mentioned in the show notes, and also something I published in the Cambridge University Press a little while ago, which does outline the concentration of power across at least the social public information space. I wanna go to the the the final few segments. So eyes and ears, what have you been reading or listening to lately that might interest my audience? Lisa Main (41:38) I read Alicia Wanless think it is the information animal and I like I just liked that she was somebody who for the first time was really trying to put the whole picture on the table and to get people thinking about what makes up an information environment. And she was also really kind of talking about the interplay of us and our cognitive history and our cultural cognitive history that we bring to that exchange. So that was a book that I really enjoyed reading this year. I really enjoyed reading the Ukraine disinformation defense system that was great and this book actually this is like a book 2021 and it's Benjamin Libout and it's kind of like a non-fiction novel but it's about those kind of inventors who were making cyanide you know the atomic bomb and not knowing what they would become. at the early stages and it really opened up a lot of questions that I think are really relevant today as we kind of head on into the kind of AI revolution. And at the base of it also sits that question of how do I know what I know? Miah Hammond-Errey (42:54) downtime. What do you do to unplug or disconnect? Lisa Main (42:58) I take my puppy for big long walks and swims. That's my favourite thing. We know all the dogs in the park. I swim. I do pilates. I find walking like it's just the right thing to do to process information. I'm lucky to kind of live somewhere where there's lots of trees. So yeah, that's what I love. you know, dinner with my family. lovely recipe in a bottle of wine. I'm so simple. Miah Hammond-Errey (43:23) Almost everyone is like, I just need to get away. And it's nature, it's movement, it's people, which is so beautiful. Lisa Main (43:29) Yeah. Miah Hammond-Errey (43:30) is there anything I should have asked that I didn't? Lisa Main (43:32) I think there are so many more questions to be asked right now than what we can possibly answer. And I think the risk is, is that we move away from asking those difficult questions for that reason that we can't answer them. But it doesn't mean that those questions need to stay with us. And that's something that I would really encourage every kind of leader to be thinking about. Like don't push it away because there's not an immediate, neat answer to this. We need to keep asking the question. The many questions around our information environment. Miah Hammond-Errey (44:01) Lisa, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast. Lisa Main (44:03) Thank you Miah, delightful to see you again.