A MIT director thinks artificial intelligence could fix one of the biggest problems in media

Local newsstations are being closed, depriving national newsrooms of valuable grassroots insight.Deb Roy, the director of the Laboratory for Social Machines at the MIT, says there needs to be an approach to bridging political and societal divisions.A nonprofit plans to givenewsrooms and local news access to machine learning, natural-language processing, and other tools.Last year's divisive American presidentialrace highlighted the extent to which mainstream media outlets were out of touch with the political pulse of the country.Deb Roy, the director of the Laboratory for Social Machines at the MIT Media Lab, says part of the problem is that many local news operations are being closed or hollowed out because of economic pressures, depriving national newsrooms of valuable grassroots insights.Speaking on Wednesday'which, coincidentally, marked the first anniversary of Donald Trump's election'Roy told the audience atMIT Technology Review'sannual EmTech MIT conference that it's vital to develop new ways of gauging the health of political discourse. The current prognosis for America isn't encouraging."The patient is sick, and the level of hostility [to opposing ideas] is real," said Roy, who is also chief media scientist at Twitter.Through work on itsElectomeproject, which applies big-data analytics to social media, Roy's team at MIT hasdemonstrated the increasing prevalence of online social-media "cocoons," which isolate people from opposing views. Throw in the phenomenon of fake news (which is set to become even more of a challenge), and it all adds up to a hot-button issue that has triggered a backlash against big social-media companies.Roy said thatInternet giants are responding, but they can't tackle this complex issue by themselves. "It's a systemic set of dynamics, and no one company on its own can hit the undo button," he explained.What's needed, he says, is an approach to bridging political and societal divisions. He seesCortico, a nonprofit he's launched in collaboration with the Media Lab, as part of that effort.It plans to give existing newsrooms and local news entrepreneurs access to top-class machine learning, natural-language processing, and other tools.Reporters can usethem to mine multiple data sources, identify grassroots concerns, and then develop stories that emphasize common ground between citizens with differing political views.Watch a clip here:SEE ALSO:BlackRock cofounder: Artificial intelligence won't replace humansJoin the conversation about this storyNOW WATCH: Here's what that square patch on your backpack is actually used for
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