Title: AI Against Misinformation

Abstract: In this talk, I’ll share lessons from my work building AI-powered tools to counter disinformation and health misinformation across South Asia. From detecting Russian influence networks on Twitter to developing public auditing systems that supported takedowns of politically motivated harassment campaigns on Meta in Bangladesh, I’ve focused on translating global trust and safety knowledge into tools for the Global South.I want to highlight the real-world impact of this work—especially on students I’ve mentored. Two student-led teams from our AI product development program have secured commercial contracts since March 2024. Alumni have gone on to join Google (US), intern at CERN, and pursue graduate programs at CMU and Columbia. Our health literacy tool, Sakhi, is live with families in rural India and Bangladesh, and both Sakhi and our disinformation tracking platform Arbiter are being incubated at UNICEF Tech Ventures. 

About the Speaker: Dhara is an NYU-educated data scientist, She brings four years of experience from a leading audience analytics firm and research collaborations with top AI scientists at Anthropic. Currently, she drives product development at SimPPL, translating business and product goals into robust technical specifications in the space of information integrity. Alongside, she leads the NextGen AI Product Incubation Program at SimPPL, mentoring students from underserved institutions during their sophomore to senior years in STEM. The program empowers students to transform their project ideas into viable, socially responsible AI products—integrating responsible computing and generative AI into their work—while running in parallel with their academic curriculum.