Such judgement comes from experts meeting in Santiago de Compostela, Galicia, where the European Conference on Artificial Intelligence, ECAI 2024, is coming to an end on Thursday.

Promoted by the European Association for Artificial Intelligence (EurAI), the Spanish Society of Artificial Intelligence (AEPIA), and organized by the University of Santiago de Compostela, the Conference brings together more than 1,600 delegates representing the world’s elite in Artificial Intelligence research.

Good arguments are weapons against censorship or blocking because they help spread a message against hate that reaches people who are not necessarily convinced.

Censoring and blocking users are, according to analysts, turn out to be ineffective tools to fight hate crimes on social media, so it is more advisable to rely on “argumentation and counter-narrative.”

Maria Vanina Martinez, a senior researcher at the Artificial Intelligence Research Institute of the Spanish National Research Council (IIIA-CSIC), argued that “argumentation is better than censorship.”

The IIIA researcher pointed out that social media are one of the “main ways of connecting and communicating” at present and their content, “automatically generated or not, influences our convictions in the decisions we make.”

“They are useful tools but they also expose us to threats, including misinformation, abusive or toxic content, hate messages, manipulation, and this is dangerous, considering that media and AI reproduce and multiply their effects,” she added.

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