Leaders Prize

Deadline: 2019-11-19
Award: $1,000,000
Open to: Canadians*

In today’s society, misinformation is everywhere. From hoaxes passed around on social media, to misrepresented scientific studies, to fiction posted on shady websites to get clicks. Misinformation makes it challenging for people to know what is really going on in the world, prevents citizens from making informed decisions and ultimately jeopardizes the integrity of the democratic system all over the world.

For many years, human fact-checkers have reliably debunked false reports by conducting independent research to validate or disprove controversial claims. Unfortunately, fact-checking is an expensive, time-intensive process and by the time a hoax has been disproved, it has already spread through social media and been accepted as truth by a disconcertingly large number of people.

With the advancement of machine learning and natural language processing techniques, we have an opportunity to fact-check claims faster than ever and stop fake news before it spreads. The Leaders Prize will award $1 million to the team who can best use artificial intelligence to automate the fact-checking process and flag whether a claim is true or false.