Welcome to the first AI election. Here’s what local officials need to know and can do to prepare
By Brian Lee-Mounger Hendershot
Artificial intelligence (AI) probably can’t do your job, but it could undermine this year’s elections. Experts and federal agencies are warning that the potential benefits of AI could be outweighed by malicious actors, a failure to regulate, and a failure to moderate. One super PAC already used AI to impersonate former President Donald Trump and a magician created fake robocalls discouraging people from voting. In Europe and India, voters are being bombarded with misleading, digitally altered images, audio clips, and videos.
Although some major tech companies have begun taking action, they have also disbanded or scaled back internal guardrails. “We’re in this weird place where in some ways, at this particular moment in the U.S., we’re actually worse off than we were in 2016,” said David Harris, an expert on AI ethics and former member of Meta’s Responsible AI team...
Dr. Hany Farid, a professor for the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley, says it’s not the tools themselves that are the problem. AI that is trained ethically, overseen by humans, and checked for bias can be beneficial. For example, voters could use AI to sift through public records to identify which politicians most align with their values...
Hany Farid is a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Sciences and the School of Information at UC Berkeley.
