Building Trust in the Age of AI – A Starling & HAI Conference at Stanford
On October 22, the Starling Lab and Stanford HAI convened a diverse group of over 100 technologists, journalists, legal experts, and archivists at the Cecil H. Green Library for our conference, Trusting Digital Content in the Age of AI.
We want to extend a sincere thank you to everyone who took part – from speakers like Brewster Kahle and Zach Seward to attendees from the AP, BBC, and the Internet Archive. Together, we moved the conversation beyond the “arms race” of deepfake detection and toward “upstream” solutions: cryptography, provenance, and interoperable ecosystems of trust.
Thank you for helping us design a more authentic digital future. We look forward to continuing this vital work with you in 2025.
The event convened a diverse group of experts to address the erosion of trust in digital ecosystems. James Landay (Stanford HAI) and Tsachy Weissman (Starling Lab) opened the conference, framing the urgent need to design new systems for authenticity.
In the first general session, Jonathan Dotan moderated a discussion on building interoperable systems of trust. Zach Seward (New York Times) addressed how newsrooms are adapting to AI, while Riana Pfefferkorn (Stanford Cyber Policy Center) explored the legal challenges of deepfakes and the “liar’s dividend.” Brewster Kahle (Internet Archive) spoke on the critical mission of preserving digital history amidst technical threats.
A second panel, led by Vanessa Parli, reviewed the year in Generative AI. Michael Bernstein (Stanford) discussed the logic of social media platforms, Oren Etzioni (TrueMedia.org) presented on deepfake detection at scale, and Aimee Rinehart (Associated Press) shared insights on AI procurement and combating misinformation in journalism.
Later sessions focused on solutions, with Dan Boneh (Stanford) demonstrating cryptographic proofs for content authenticity, joined by Jeff Hancock and Margaret Hagan on the human and legal aspects of trust. Finally, Ann Grimes, Basile Simon, and Adam Rose led discipline-specific roundtables on tools for journalism, law, and archiving.
