Bimal Viswanath, a doctoral student who graduated in 2016, was concerned with the malicious behaviors and online threats present in large social media platforms. At the time, attackers paid human workers to write and distribute fraudulent online articles and reviews, and these efforts were easily detected and blocked by defensive algorithms. However, as attackers began to use artificial intelligence to generate more sophisticated materials, Viswanath saw the need to develop algorithms that could detect and defend against AI-generated threats.
