The AI dashboard shows frigates gathering around Cyprus and military aircraft flying toward the Gulf, where a news pin alerts users to unconfirmed reports of a drone strike on Dubai.
At this point Friday, more than 3,200 people had their eyes glued to “Monitor the Situation,” which tracks everything from the whereabouts of world leaders to Internet outages.
It’s one of many free sites that use artificial intelligence to turn data into information-rich but not always reliable interactive world maps.
Interest in these tools has increased since the outbreak of conflict in the Middle East, along with memes gently poking fun at the kind of people who seek a movie-like control center experience.
“I think it’s human psychology: They feel like they have God’s point of view or something,” said Elie Habib, creator of the AI dashboard “World Monitor.”
Habib, CEO of Middle East music streaming platform Anghami, said: AFP “World Monitor” has received 4.4 million visits since its construction in January.
“I just want to understand what’s going on in the world,” said the 53-year-old Dubai-based man, who originally envisioned his tool as a “Bloomberg terminal for geopolitics.”
Although the war has sparked renewed interest, Habib said he did not place advertising on the site because he did not want to profit from the conflict.
“World Monitor” displays more than 450 data sources on a cluttered, customizable screen that includes live webcams from strategic global locations and AI-curated headlines from real media outlets.
Among a multitude of options on their map, users can see in real time where protests, GPS jamming and earthquakes are occurring.
Habib said he was “trying to take the next step, which is extracting the signals from the noise. Otherwise, for me, it’s just too much noise.”
“Not just a feast for the eyes”
Habib, an engineer by training based in Dubai, used AI to “code” his website over a weekend – a task he says would have taken at least a year if he had written the computer script by hand.
The inner workings of “World Monitor” are open source, so other programmers made changes and suggestions that Habib has since incorporated.
Sites like “World Monitor” and “Monitor the Situation”, co-created by a staffer at US venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, have many flashy features, but experts say users should not consider all of their ideas credible.
“They are not mere eye candy… but they are not truth engines either,” said Wei Sun, principal analyst for AI at Counterpoint Research. AFP.
“The risk of hallucination is real” when an AI model is tasked with determining the meaning of information or causal links, she said.
Despite the risk of fake data, these AI dashboards “address a very modern psychological need,” Sun said.
“In times of crisis, people want speed, synthesis, and a sense of control when headlines are fragmented and overwhelming.”
Some sites have chat rooms for users to interact, noted Sun Sun Lim, professor of communications and technology at Singapore Management University.
It’s “especially interesting during the events that are happening,” she said.
“Interest in world events has also been fueled by the rise of prediction markets where people bet on events,” from national elections to the ouster of Iran’s supreme leader, Lim said. Live streams of these bets are sometimes presented on the AI dashboards.
The same goes for information like AFP Or Reuters Are you concerned that people are turning to such sites for updates on the global situation?
“They should be somewhat worried, but not existentially,” Counterpoint’s Sun said.
“In my view, the real disruption comes not from AI dashboards replacing these news feeds, but from how they push them to the top of the market, to become the most trusted validators and explainers.”
