Preventing Disinformation, Deputy Minister Stella: Be Cautious When Receiving Information from AI

Jakarta (ANTARA) - The Deputy Minister for Higher Education, Science, and Technology, Stella Christie, has called on the public to be cautious when receiving information from Artificial Intelligence (AI) to counter misinformation and disinformation, which pose serious challenges in the digital era.

In a statement in Jakarta on Friday, Deputy Minister Stella assessed that the development of artificial intelligence has increased the difficulty of distinguishing between true and false information. She noted that the error rate from ten major AI chatbots increased from 18 per cent in August 2024 to 35 per cent in 2025.

“We believe hoaxes do not occur because of stupidity, but because the human brain naturally uses fast thinking shortcuts. Once we take a two-second pause to rethink, our ability to recognise hoaxes increases significantly,” said Stella.

She highlighted the business model of social media, which prioritises the ‘economy of attention’, as algorithms on these platforms tend to prioritise content that triggers emotions and clickbait rather than accuracy.

“Fact-checking must still be conducted, but it cannot be the sole solution because the volume of hoaxes is too vast to check individually. A much cheaper and more effective way is to remind everyone to pause for a moment before sharing information,” Stella remarked.

According to her, excessive labelling of information as hoaxes can create new problems by encouraging the public to become sceptical of information that is actually true.

Therefore, Stella invited all elements of society, particularly the younger generation, to familiarise themselves with pausing and re-verifying information before sharing it. This simple habit, she noted, is a crucial step in breaking the chain of hoax dissemination amidst the heavy flow of digital information.