Audrey Tang Urges AI Labels to Shield Youth From Cognitive Warfare

Social-media recommendation algorithms can amplify divisive and emotionally charged content, helping false narratives spread and deepening polarization. Audrey Tang, Taiwan’s former minister of digital affairs, argues that defenses against cognitive warfare should extend beyond fact-checking after claims go viral. She advocates combining AI-generated context labels, Pre-Bunking and civic collaboration to help users recognize manipulation before misleading narratives take hold.

In a recent discussion with a Japanese scholar, Tang proposed using AI to attach contextual information to online content and building collaborative mechanisms across communities to counter coordinated influence campaigns. She placed particular emphasis on protecting adolescents, calling for stronger digital-defense skills and habits of digital self-discipline. The approach is intended to reduce young users’ exposure to algorithm-driven manipulation and improve their resilience to cognitive-warfare threats.