There will be exhausted but happy BBC executives this week delighted at how deftly they handled its coverage of Eurovision and the Coronation. Both events showed BBC creativity at its peak. There is, however, an arm of the broadcaster which is far less celebrated: the World Service. It has often been regarded as a dusty relative within the Beeb, compared to the glamour of drama and entertainment. And debate about the organisation Tim Davie leads has centred in recent years on controversy over post-Brexit impartiality and political wrangles about the licence fee. But this needs to change.
There is an almighty battle ahead, a war we must wage against a looming explosion of disinformation, powered by leaps in artificial intelligence that will be used to create fake news of such sophistication it will have the ability to manipulate elections, bring down governments, defeat democratic states and be a driving force behind greater global instability. As one AI specialist told an increasingly alarmed US Senate committee hearing this week, AI tools will soon be able to “create persuasive lies on a scale that humanity has never seen.” Every AI creator and expert is unified in his fearful projection.
