Dartmouth Events

Abstract:

Conspiracy theories have flourished online, fueling the spread of disinformation, supporting extremist ideologies, and disrupting our very democracies. I will begin by describing two large-scale studies examining how disinformation spreads online. These studies point a finger at the ultimate culprits behind disinformation campaigns, and provide insights into effective interventions. I will then pivot to discuss deepfakes, the latest trend in disinformation, the development of techniques to detect deepfakes, and a recent deepfake detector deployed across LinkedIn.

Bio:

Hany Farid is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley with a joint appointment in electrical engineering & computer sciences and the School of Information. He is also a member of the Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Lab, Berkeley Institute for Data Science, Center for Innovation in Vision and Optics, Development Engineering, Vision Science Program, and is a senior faculty advisor for the Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity. His research focuses on digital forensics, forensic science, misinformation, image analysis, and human perception.

He received his undergraduate degree in computer science and applied mathematics from the University of Rochester in 1989, his M.S. in computer science from SUNY Albany, and his Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Pennsylvania in 1997. Following a two-year post-doctoral fellowship in brain and cognitive sciences at MIT, he joined the faculty at Dartmouth College in 1999 where he remained until 2019.

He is the recipient of an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship and a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship and is a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors.