[The Fountain] Telling facts from fake news in the GPT era
PARK HYUNG-SOOThe author is an international news reporter at the JoongAng Ilbo.
Lately, the hot issue surrounding Finland is NATO membership, but Koreans always think of the country as an “educational powerhouse.” In the first Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) by the OECD, Finland ranked first in overall evaluation in 2000. In the assessment, conducted every three years, Finland placed at the top in 2003 and 2006.
Since then, Finland has fallen behind Korea, Singapore and China, strongholds in private education. Its rank fell to 10th. But Finland was imprinted as an “educational paradise” in the minds of Koreans, as the country showed amazing results only through public education. Though Korea was given the moniker “pressure cooker” for its excessive competition and private education, Koreans still admire the exemplary case of Finland.
Finnish education is drawing attention again as Open Society Institute, a Bulgaria-based nongovernmental organization, put Finland in first place for five consecutive years in the media literacy index. The index is calculated based on the media credibility of each country and on the reading, science and math skills of the subjects in 41 European countries.
People with a higher index are known to have stronger resilience against being swayed by fake news and an ability to decipher the facts by filtering out false information.
Finland has been teaching how to distinguish “fake information” from the media at libraries as well as kindergartens and schools to the young, middle aged and elderly people since 2013.
This is worth noting now, in connection with ChatGPT. Some are worried that the generative AI, which learns from a vast amount of data and creates new content, will emerge as a new platform for the spread of fake news by replacing current social media. After a Chinese version of ChatGPT was introduced, Taiwan announced it would make a Taiwanese version, as the other would only represent China’s position. It is possible to feed ChatGPT only “intentional data” and use it to spread biased information.
Is Korea ready to respond to ChatGPT-based fake news? The 2018 PISA results show that only 25.6 percent of Korean students could distinguish truth from facts. That is about half the OECD average of 47 percent, pushing Korea nearly to the bottom.
“Russia is pouring out massive fake news before our entry into the NATO. But we believe in the effect of education,” said an official from the Ministry of Education in Finland. Education needs a hundred years of planning. I envy the vision and confidence of Finland more than ever.
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
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