An AI can determine a user's political edge thanks to their tweets

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Can an algorithm guess a person's political orientation based on what they post on Twitter?

Apparently yes, say researchers at Ohio State University (USA).

They have developed an artificial intelligence (AI) capable of guessing the political affinities of a user of the social network simply by analyzing their tweets.

The results turned out to be rather convincing, reports

.

A polarized political landscape

No less than 31,000 tweets published between January 17 and March 31 were submitted to the algorithm.

All were linked to the coronavirus pandemic which is affecting the whole world this year.

The AI ​​was able to determine whether users were Democrats or Republicans 76% of the time.

If the beginnings could have been complicated, the AI ​​very quickly knew how to differentiate the two political sides.

And for good reason, when the Democrats evoke the social and health consequences of the crisis, the Republicans focus more on the economic effects, mentioning companies or China.

An unprecedented polarization of the debate, when all political parties presented a united front in the past, as after the attacks of September 11.

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• Coronavirus

• Artificial intelligence

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