{"id":61422,"date":"2023-11-30T12:16:37","date_gmt":"2023-11-30T20:16:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=61422"},"modified":"2023-11-30T12:16:37","modified_gmt":"2023-11-30T20:16:37","slug":"artificial-intelligence-could-dramatically-reshape-the-2024-us-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=61422","title":{"rendered":"Artificial Intelligence Could Dramatically Reshape the 2024 US Election"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"td_block_wrap tdb_single_author tdi_54 td-pb-border-top td_block_template_1 tdb-post-meta\" data-td-block-uid=\"tdi_54\">\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\">\n<div class=\"tdb-author-name-wrap\"><span class=\"tdb-author-by\">By<\/span><a class=\"tdb-author-name\" href=\"https:\/\/ethnicmediaservices.org\/author\/sunita\/\">Sunita Sohrabji<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"td_block_wrap tdb_single_date tdi_55 td-pb-border-top td_block_template_1 tdb-post-meta\" data-td-block-uid=\"tdi_55\">\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\"><i class=\"tdb-date-icon tdc-font-fa tdc-font-fa-calendar\"><\/i><time class=\"entry-date updated td-module-date\" datetime=\"2023-11-29T17:34:03-08:00\">Nov 29, 2023<\/time><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"td_block_wrap tdb_single_subtitle tdi_56 td-pb-border-top td_block_template_1\" data-td-block-uid=\"tdi_56\">\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\">\n<p>The Biden Administration\u2019s executive order on AI places many standards on the emerging technology, but experts say much more is needed to safeguard the election process.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"td_block_wrap tdb_single_featured_image tdi_57 tdb-content-horiz-left td-pb-border-top td_block_template_1\" data-td-block-uid=\"tdi_57\">\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\">\n<figure><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"entry-thumb td-animation-stack-type0-2\" title=\"Brennan AI\" src=\"https:\/\/ethnicmediaservices.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/qtq80-NaE22p-e1701307650266.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1250\" height=\"829\" \/><figcaption class=\"tdb-caption-text\">(WordPress stock photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"td_block_wrap tdb_single_content tdi_58 td-pb-border-top td_block_template_1 td-post-content tagdiv-type\" data-td-block-uid=\"tdi_58\">\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\">\n<p>Generative artificial intelligence has the potential to dramatically disrupt the outcome of the 2024 US election, said experts at a briefing Nov. 27, hosted by the Brennan Center for Justice.<\/p>\n<p>Once confined strictly to science fiction, AI is now everywhere. Generative AI\u2019s capabilities to manipulate data, impersonate experts, candidates, and political leaders, and spew out misinformation on social media arrives at a time when voters are already challenged with separating fact from falsehoods.<\/p>\n<p>In a surprise moment during the briefing, moderator Zoe Schiffer, managing editor at Platformer News, featured a clip that used generative AI to create a cloned version of speaker Lawrence Norden,\u00a0Senior Director of the Elections and Government Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. The AI-generated Norden was able to accurately replicate Norden\u2019s concerns about AI in the upcoming elections, but added additional disinformation and hyperbole about China, Iran and Russia\u2019s alleged interference.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Deep Fakes<\/h2>\n<p>The real Norden broke down his concerns down into four categories: imitation threat, also known as deep fakes, in which Chat GPT is used to generate articles that look like they are coming from election offices or candidates.<\/p>\n<p>AI can also be used for harassment of election officials, said Norden, with AI-generated emails flooding election offices with frivolous records\u2019 requests. \u201cYou could just imagine offices being inundated with thousands and thousands of requests that keep election officials from doing their work,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>A third threat is cyberattacks, potentially against election offices, said Norden, adding that his fourth concern was public fear of AI. \u201cThere\u2019s been so much written about it and there\u2019s been so much undermining of confidence in our elections already that AI itself, and the claims for what it can do may add to this undermining of confidence in election,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Multifactorial authentication \u2014 requiring people to put in a password sent to their phones \u2014 can curb some of the issues with AI-generated material, said Norden. Voting machines and electronic poll books must have paper backups, he said.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Biden Executive Order<\/h2>\n<p>\u201cWe need to make sure that election officials, the media are giving the public accurate information about elections,\u201d said Norden.<\/p>\n<p>In October, the Biden Administration announced an executive order, attempting to place safeguards and oversight on the use of AI. Mia Hoffman, a research fellow at the Center of for Security and Emerging Technology at Georgetown University, said the action was a good start.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAt a high level,\u00a0it does a lot of things right. I think they\u2019re trying to address a lot of different concerns with one directive and that\u2019s hard to do,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>In the context of elections, the executive order addresses disinformation with watermarking techniques: hidden patterns are going to be embedded in AI generated content so that it will be detectable and identifiable. \u201cWe can actually tell what information and what media is real and what\u2019s fake,\u201d said Hoffman. She added that she was also excited about investments in research into authentication technology.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Risk Assessment<\/h2>\n<p>\u201cBeing able to tell that some information has not been manipulated might actually become more valuable than being able to tell if something has been AI-generated or not because it just requires kind of trustworthy issuers of news to be able to comply with this authentication rather than making everybody who generates something with AI use watermarking,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>Election hardware and software will be subject to an annual risk assessment when AI is used,\u201d said Hoffman, noting that the National Institutes of Safety and Technology framework \u2014 the gold standard for risk assessment \u2014 will be used.<\/p>\n<p>Mekela Panditharatne,\u00a0Counsel\u00a0for the democracy program at the\u00a0Brennan\u00a0Center for Justice, said more needed to be done by Congress to safeguard not only elections, but general use of AI.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Voter Suppression<\/h2>\n<p>\u201cAbsent to Congressional action, theres sort of a modest amount that can be done and made enforceable by the federal government, and we kind of saw that with this order. So given those constraints. I do think it\u2019s an admirable effort.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Panditharatne said the order invokes the Defense Production Act, a national security law. \u201cBut when you look at what\u2019s enforceable, it\u2019s a very small portion of items. Elements like voter suppression, the use of AI in election administration, and election security aren\u2019t expressly recognized. So as the order is implemented, there are certainly important steps that need to be taken to ensure that that those elements are sufficiently protected, but much more is needed by Congress as well,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">False Narratives<\/h2>\n<p>Post-election, Panditharatne said she expects to see AI employed to generate distrust of results, as with the 2020 election. \u201cWe might see sort of amplification of false narratives about the election process, potentially deep fakes of election officials manipulating the vote count or preventing people from voting. That\u2019s something that we should be worried about potentially seeing,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>All of the experts encouraged voters to deeply examine the sources from which they are receiving election-related content.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BySunita Sohrabji Nov 29, 2023 The&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":60393,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion","category-u-s-a"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=61422"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61422\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61423,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61422\/revisions\/61423"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/60393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=61422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=61422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=61422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}