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Lead With AI

The War on Misinformation: How AmICredible Is Becoming the World’s Fact Filter

20 Jan 2026

Transcription

Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?

0.031 - 24.216 Dr. Tamara Nall

On today's episode of Lead with AI, it's all about something we desperately need in the digital age, trust. With misinformation spreading faster than ever, what if there was an AI that could tell you before you hit share whether your post is actually credible? And better yet, whether or not a post you see is credible.

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24.196 - 54.669 Dr. Tamara Nall

That's exactly what my guest Dan Nottingham and his team have built with Am I Credible? An AI platform designed to fact check your content, rate your sources, and help you build digital trust one post at a time. Because in a world where everyone's got a platform, credibility might just be your most valuable currency. Let's get into it. Welcome to Lead with AI. I'm Dr. Tamara Nall.

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54.929 - 86.965 Dr. Tamara Nall

In each episode, we will take you behind the scenes with the visionary leaders shaping the future of AI across public and private sectors. Join us as we explore groundbreaking projects and innovations that are transforming industries and making a real impact on people's lives. Let's dive in. So hi, everyone. Welcome back. It's Dr. T, your host with Lead with AI.

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87.426 - 111.346 Dr. Tamara Nall

And we're so excited because, number one, we actually hit the number one spot in technology on Apple Podcasts this year. And we have won the W3 Gold Award. in interviewing for podcasts. So we're so excited. And it's listeners like you that make it possible for us now to be award-winning as well as number one ranked.

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111.846 - 128.385 Dr. Tamara Nall

So I'm also excited because we couldn't get here if we didn't have wonderful guests like our guests today. And I'm excited about talking about Am I Credible? But we have Dan Nottingham, who is the founder and CEO of Am I Credible? Dan, how are you?

128.365 - 132.649 Dan Nottingham

I'm just fine, thanks. And thank you for having me on this award-winning program.

133.51 - 152.77 Dr. Tamara Nall

Thank you. Thank you. So tell us a little bit, before we get into the product itself, tell us a little bit about who you are at your core, your passions, and how your passion kind of led to founding Am I Credible and knowing that there was a need for it.

153.661 - 173.948 Dan Nottingham

So if we go back to my core, we have to go all the way back to my college days where I majored in physics and astronomy. And I got a job at Boston University Center for Space Physics where I worked for seven years as a staff scientist. And so at my core, I am a scientist, although my career took me away from academia.

174.299 - 202.791 Dan Nottingham

But during with this scientific mindset, I became really frustrated hearing people say things like, I don't know what to believe anymore. And I understand that. And when you take into account that trust in mainstream media is at an all time low, people dismiss expertise in favor for some opinion based belief. That that really sort of frustrated me.

Chapter 2: How does AmICredible work to assess credibility?

217.285 - 236.387 Dr. Tamara Nall

And it's interesting. I actually, one of my alma maters where I got my doctorate is George Washington University. And we had a breakfast alumni event this morning. And we were just talking about how it is so hard to know what's true and what's credible. And there are all these different data sources that are coming in and statements that are being made.

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236.767 - 258.603 Dr. Tamara Nall

And even with AI, you don't know if it's real or not, which depending on who you are, could be a good thing because you can just blame AI and say, that's not me, that's AI. Going to trying to figure out what's real. And so I am just getting goosebumps hearing about Am I Credible? So tell us a little bit more about what it is and what it does.

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259.645 - 276.602 Dan Nottingham

Well, it tries to... mimic what a regular person would do if they were really trying to research something to find out whether or not it's true. And so what you would do if you were good at doing research, you would start with your sources and you would check credible sources.

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277.223 - 301.636 Dan Nottingham

So what Am I Credible does at first is goes out and it uses some technical approach to determine what's a credible source for this particular piece of information you're asking about. And so it'll reach out to those multiple different sources. And it purposely is designed to look for varying points of view. It brings that together because we're trying to weed out bias the best we can.

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302.216 - 322.42 Dan Nottingham

Brings together all that information into one place and then has multiple large language models pass over that information to do an analysis. Is the statement that you're trying to have validated or the question you have? Do all these sources agree? Is there consensus that you can build?

322.961 - 343.127 Dan Nottingham

And of course, the large language models, you might argue, well, some of them have bias in them, the way they're trained, where they prompt it. So that's why we use multiple large language models to then kind of look through the data and decide, what am I really learning from this? And then at the end, it creates a full analysis of what it's learned.

344.068 - 366.036 Dan Nottingham

It lists all the sources and creates a credibility score from zero to 10 that tells you how credible is this. So at a glance, before you even read the analysis, you can see right away is what I'm researching, what I'm trying to say, what I'm thinking about, is it credible? And then you read about why or why not.

366.809 - 378.242 Dr. Tamara Nall

Okay, well, you're just sharing all the secrets because I was going to actually ask that later in terms of if we were to open up the hood and look at the brain, how it works. And so you share that with us. And let me just make sure that I'm clear.

378.642 - 405.877 Dr. Tamara Nall

So if I want to post some fact or even some opinion on social media or even talk about it and try to seem cool at a cocktail party, I can put that in there and say, you know, one out of 10 of every, you know, American or everyone has X, Y, and Z and I can put it in. Am I credible? And it would actually tell me whether or not what I'm saying is truth or truthful.

Chapter 3: Why is fact-checking alone insufficient in today's digital age?

446.408 - 447.069 Dr. Tamara Nall

Correct.

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447.209 - 468.99 Dan Nottingham

And if you have if you're going to try to be a credible person, you know, put the be accountable for yourself and what you say. Maybe you'll check things before you say it. And that way you kind of proactively can stop misinformation from right in its tracks before it starts spreading, before it's even created.

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469.949 - 482.168 Dr. Tamara Nall

Right, right. No, I love that. And then, too, and we were talking about this before the show, is that I can then take other people's posts and their statements and check it as well.

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482.329 - 482.83 Dan Nottingham

Yes.

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482.85 - 503.25 Dr. Tamara Nall

And actually, that probably will lead to some interesting debates and conversations because I can then say, well, actually, that is not true what you posted. And here are the sources. And then... I don't know why, but I'm I'm actually a little bit obsessed with being, you know, being kind of like cool or like cocktail parties and stuff.

503.471 - 530.716 Dr. Tamara Nall

So not only can I say the truthful, credible fact, I can then say, well, according to source A, B and C. So that's good. No, this is so timely, Dan. Again, given everything that's coming out in social media, I sometimes just feel so overwhelmed, you know? And I feel like sometimes, particularly now, people are drawn to where they're already aligned, right?

531.516 - 544.091 Dr. Tamara Nall

And so this is a great AI platform to be able to check myself and have some self-reflection on kind of like, my views and my thoughts and whether or not they're accurate.

544.111 - 565.309 Dan Nottingham

You know, you, you, uh, you make an interesting point in the cocktail party where you, uh, you hear someone say something and you want to challenge them, but maybe you're not confident enough, your own knowledge that you kind of let it go or, or that even happens online where you see something. Oh yeah. I don't think that's right, but I'm not confident enough to challenge it.

565.429 - 590.269 Dan Nottingham

And I know everybody's going to just jump on me. So I'll just stay away. Uh, The idea here is that maybe we can start having more civil conversations by bringing them down to fact-based things. Instead of challenging somebody and say, oh, you're just wrong and let me tell you why, you can say, that's interesting. Here's what Am I Credible has to say about your statement.

Chapter 4: How does AmICredible reduce bias in its assessments?

630.34 - 636.527 Dan Nottingham

It's a browser-based. So you can bring up your browser and do it on your phone. Perfect.

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637.548 - 638.269 Dr. Tamara Nall

Okay, great.

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638.289 - 654.008 Dan Nottingham

We're building the app now. So it'll be available on Android and Apple soon, in the next few months. But right now, users can bring it on. I use it all the time on my phone. It works fine. It's just going to be better when we have the app.

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654.983 - 668.143 Dr. Tamara Nall

Awesome. I love it. Yep. So we can do that there. So let's now talk about the holy smokes moment. Tell us about a time where a user or a tester or someone actually used Am I Credible? And it changed everything for for them.

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669.405 - 679 Dan Nottingham

So I'm going to give you an example of myself. OK, because, you know, I'm not eavesdropping on people using it because of things they're asking and stuff.

679.047 - 682.971 Dr. Tamara Nall

Well, I didn't know if you received some email or some communications like, wow, you know, those.

684.032 - 706.894 Dan Nottingham

Not yet. You know, we released in September and I haven't heard that. I personally got to experience what I hoped the application was going to do for others. And I was with a group of friends and politics came up and this group were very diverse politically. It's kind of fun. We all have different views and we all get along.

707.161 - 715.331 Dan Nottingham

Well, I was having a discussion with one of my friends who we were polar opposites on one particular thing.

716.111 - 716.912 Dr. Tamara Nall

Very commonly.

Chapter 5: What unique features does AmICredible offer to users?

765.667 - 769.314 Dan Nottingham

And I'm hoping that's the experience that others will have using this.

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770.135 - 789.21 Dr. Tamara Nall

Right, right. People can come down and be humble about it. Okay, that's great. Now, through the development of Am I Credible, were there moments where you're... I mean, you gave us a wonderful example there where you were having this discussion with your colleague, your friend. During the development of Am I Credible, were there moments where you were like...

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789.19 - 806.674 Dr. Tamara Nall

wow, I can't believe that I founded this, that I developed this. Like this really is a game changer. And can you just take us back to that moment? And if, you know, you have a victory song or dance, feel free to do that as well. You know, however you celebrate, you can share it.

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806.714 - 816.447 Dr. Tamara Nall

But yeah, take us to that moment where through the development of the product, you were yourself amazed at what Am I Credible can do.

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816.747 - 846.147 Dan Nottingham

At first, I thought this was going to be something that was going to be very easy. You just prompt a large language model properly and it's going to come back. And it's just saving people the trouble of creating a prompt. But there's not a big technical hurdle here. And I tried using ChatGPT and Gemini and a few others. And thought, okay, if I just prompt it correctly, it'll get me back.

846.785 - 870.733 Dan Nottingham

Some answers. But then it turns out when you really start hammering it with all kinds of different sorts of information that you might want to get out of it, we discover that it's just not that simple. AI will kind of go off and it'll hallucinate. It'll do things wrong. It doesn't behave quite the way you want it to.

871.304 - 881.296 Dan Nottingham

So it required almost a year's worth of work, of understanding how the engines work in this particular context.

882.017 - 882.277 Unknown

Yes.

882.357 - 897.856 Dan Nottingham

AI is an emerging technology, so it's not always going to behave the way you think it's going to behave. So we had to do a lot of different techniques. A lot of proprietary code was written to help the AI engines behave in a way that was going to give us the results we wanted.

Chapter 6: How can users interact with AmICredible in real-time?

979.269 - 1005.887 Dan Nottingham

We were all learning from it. And I remember that the first time it came back with the full analysis, with a credibility score that just felt right, it was spot on. Now we have something. It doesn't matter what the rest of the product looks like. That analysis and that credibility score with its source material, that is the product. That's the information that we're trying to share.

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1005.907 - 1009.075 Dan Nottingham

And that was exciting when it all came together and it worked.

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1009.713 - 1023.525 Dr. Tamara Nall

Got it. No, that is amazing. Now, if I put something in the, am I credible and I get my credibility score, what's the range of what's considered credible versus not? Is it eight to 10? Is it up to me as the user? How does that work?

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1023.605 - 1046.684 Dan Nottingham

Yeah. So it's, it's, it's a spectrum, right? It's from zero to 10, 10 being the most credible thing. And zero being, I can't find anything credible about this statement at all. The facts are wrong. The context is wrong. And it's different from fact checking. You could put in, and this is where misinformation gets so tricky sometimes.

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1047.645 - 1076.864 Dan Nottingham

You can list several facts, but then you can wrap it in a context that distorts it. So you can say all these facts are correct, but the context in which it's being used is misleading. And so we use all of that to create what we call credibility score rather than just fact checking. So it's things together. And we have a it's kind of a proprietary algorithm to determine the score itself. Sure.

1076.904 - 1091.086 Dan Nottingham

It ranks it. But if it's unsure, if it says, yeah, this is a little iffy, that's going to be somewhere in the middle of the scale between a four and a six. Things over six tend to feel like, okay, this is more credible than not.

1093.212 - 1121.935 Dr. Tamara Nall

So I'm trying to wrap my hands around... There is a difference, I hear you, between fact checking and credibility. I get that. I'm just trying to find the difference in my mind and reconcile it. I guess if you can have three facts and all of them are incorrect, but if your context is trying to point them out that they're incorrect, then that would be a high credibility score.

1123.332 - 1136.72 Dan Nottingham

So the facts and the context have to both be correct for it to come out with a high credibility score.

1136.74 - 1138.945 Dr. Tamara Nall

And what's an example of a context?

Chapter 7: What ethical considerations are taken into account in AmICredible's design?

1156.181 - 1185.713 Dan Nottingham

I look overhead, looks like there's a dome. I have two facts that everyone would agree on. The plane ahead of me looks flat and the sky looks like a dome. Therefore, the earth is flat. Both of the things I said were facts. And my conclusion, if those are the only facts, that conclusion would seem credible if it weren't for a whole breadth of other facts that were ignored.

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1186.734 - 1187.194 Dr. Tamara Nall

Okay.

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1187.214 - 1193.6 Dan Nottingham

I wrapped a couple of facts with incorrect conclusion because I chose to ignore a bunch of other facts.

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1195.262 - 1208.303 Dr. Tamara Nall

Got it. Okay. That's very helpful. Thank you for that. Now, how do you think about ethics? What are the ethical considerations that you've considered while developing and innovating Am I Credible?

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1208.824 - 1233.215 Dan Nottingham

Bias has been our biggest challenge. Okay, got it. So bias and transparency are two areas that we really focus on. So bias is the hardest one because who who's making the call into what's bias and what's not what's true. You know, you don't want to pretend you're the Oracle of truth. There isn't something truth has context. Truth is kind of a slippery thing.

1233.235 - 1260.697 Dan Nottingham

So how do you that's why we chose to use the word credible. Incredible. So trying to weed out that bias was just a way of being able to say, let's just do what any reporter would do, any good reporter would do with some general journalistic integrity. They look at multiple sources. They try to check with multiple different tools.

1261.177 - 1286.216 Dan Nottingham

They look across all kinds of different points of view and then come back with a conclusion. Now, if you were to do that as an individual, that would take you the better part of a day to do that in one particular thing. So we wanted to try to embrace that idea of trying to not stack the deck. Don't give it a worldview. Don't try to make it lean one way or the other. Just find out what's true.

1286.496 - 1303.543 Dan Nottingham

Well, I shouldn't say true. What's credible isn't true. And by spread by averaging out all the biases as much as we could, we believe that was a way of being as ethical as we could with this, not to support any particular worldview.

1304.148 - 1320.874 Dr. Tamara Nall

Got it. And does, am I credible? Does you talk about prompting earlier? Does it depend on how I prompt or it's just so focused on giving it a credibility score that I just put in the statement and it automatically knows what it's doing. I don't have to like prompt it.

Chapter 8: What is the future vision for AmICredible and credibility in media?

1320.854 - 1347.233 Dan Nottingham

That's it. So we do have a prompt that we built into it, but it says things like the prompt includes statements like you do not take a political stance on anything. You are to be an unbiased judge. We try to tell it what it is and what it's trying to do. So we've built all that into it to try to be as neutral as we can. All you have to do is put in a statement and it evaluates it.

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1347.803 - 1358.499 Dr. Tamara Nall

Got it. OK, awesome. Now, where do you see the big future for Am I Credible? You know, five years from now, three years from now, a year from now. What is the big future and how is Am I Credible going to change the world?

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1359.741 - 1379.704 Dan Nottingham

What we see as the future is a place where credibility is. and trust is kind of built into the system. So right now you think of, uh, uh, social media platforms, information spreads through interactions with it, right? Positive or negative.

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1380.225 - 1411.565 Dan Nottingham

We want to see, or we see being added in the future that credibility, something with a high credibility and high interaction spreads with something with maybe a lot of interactions, but a low credibility, uh, doesn't spread as much. It's frothed. Now, that doesn't mean that we tell you what to think or that we try to stifle free speech. It's just a matter of being like a responsible editor.

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1412.666 - 1421.996 Dan Nottingham

There are things that aren't worthy of being published. And yet all of us now with social media are kind of global publishers.

1422.877 - 1423.218 Dr. Tamara Nall

Right.

1423.318 - 1446.986 Dan Nottingham

And we have nothing giving us any guidance on what you should be publishing. I see credibility in the future being used as a tool for being able to tell something's interesting, something's popular and credible. That spreads more easily than something that is interesting, popular and not credible. Got it.

1447.006 - 1456.735 Dr. Tamara Nall

OK, fair, fair. Like that. And if our listeners want to try out, am I credible today? How can they best do that?

1456.968 - 1477.998 Dan Nottingham

Well, you simply go to amicredible.ai. Okay. And right there, you can go straight in as a guest and try it out. I think the best way to judge Am I Credible is to use it. Just see what it says. But you don't even have to create an account to try it. You like what it does, you can then create an account.

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