Technology meets democracy

INESC TEC Science Bits – Episode 18

Link to episode (in Portuguese)

Invited guests:

Rita Costa, INESC TEC, Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto and Polytechnic Institute of Bragança

Nuno Moniz, Artificial Intelligence and Decision Support Laboratory from INESC TEC and Faculty of Science of the University of Porto

Palavras-chave: democracy | technology | social media | brexit | artificial intelligence | elections

In 2018, Facebook was involved in a scandal: journalists revealed that the US company Cambridge Analytica used information from more than 50 million people without their consent, to target them with personalised political advertisements. The information obtained by Facebook was used to spread misinformation among voters who used said social network. To many, this was considered an electoral fraud. 

This is one of the many troubling examples of what happens when democracy meets technologies like big data, artificial intelligence, social networks, etc. In this episode of Science Bits, close to the Portuguese local elections, we’ll discuss politics and technology with Rita Costa and Nuno Moniz. 

Rita Costa is an assistant in Digital Culture at the Polytechnic Institute of Bragança, and member of INESC TEC Communication Service. Nuno Moniz is a researcher at INESC TEC’s Laboratory of Artificial Intelligence and Decision Support, and professor at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Porto.