AI and elections

The Brennan Center for Justice has a series of articles on the topic “AI and Democracy.” (1)

Mekela Panditharatne identifies what she calls the “first known instance” of using AI to clone a voice for purposes of election interference:

On the eve of the 2024 New Hampshire primary, robocalls impersonating President Joe Biden counseled voters against partaking in a write-in campaign supporting Biden, urging them to “save your vote” for the general election. It was the first known instance of the deployment of voice-cloning artificial intelligence at significant scale to try to deter voters from participating in an American election. A political operative later admitted to commissioning the scheme; creating the fake audio reportedly cost just $1 and took less than 20 minutes. Similar attempts are almost certain to plague future elections as the rapid uptake and development of generative AI tools continue apace. [my emphasis] (2)

Media techniques continually evolve. And now faking voices in a convincing way is now cheaper and higher quality.

The Brenner Center has been giving special attention to analyzing voter-suppression efforts. And Panditharatne puts the AI fake into that much longer trend. Racist voter-suppression attempts directed at Black voters and other minorities has been around long before “artificial intelligence” gained it’s official AI label in 1956:

This phenomenon is not entirely new — vote suppression through disinformation has a long provenance in the United States. Since Black Americans and other Americans of color gained the formal right to vote [i.e., by the 14th Amendment], malefactors committed acts of terror to intimidate voters and pressed for restrictive election laws that created unjustifiable barriers to voting. These suppression efforts have taken the form of deceptions to prevent minority citizens from voting for at least 25 years. Similarly, antagonists of American democracy have removed eligible voters from registration lists, specifically targeting minority voters. From the Reconstruction era to the digital age, these strategies have persisted and evolved, retaining core elements even as new technologies and platforms have allowed for more precise and rapid targeting of voters.

In general, like with any subject, it’s important to pay attention to what is being claimed on a popular topic like this. Critical thinking is even more important because billions of dollars in investments are at stake in this “third wave” of AI development that is currently dated from OpenAI’s making its ChatGPT public at the end of 1922.

There’s a concept from Hegel’s philosophy of “quantity turns into quantity.” For instance, 80% Fahrenheit would be considered hot in most places. If you get to, say, 126% F (52% Celsius), you’re talking about a level of heat that is an immediate, serious risk to human life. (3) If you drop a two-ounce pebble from the third floor onto the sidewalk, it’s not going to do any damage that could be detected without a microscope. If you drop a 500-boulder from the third floor onto the sidewalk, the damage will be considerably greater and very visible.

In the case of AI, like with other technologies, if it enables people to do a lot more of something they’re already doing, it can mean developing something qualitatively different. (For better or worse!)

Technological developments have always had effects on how politics is done. In 1948, Harry Truman took a “whistle stop tour” of the country during his Presidential campaign. (4)

Abraham Lincoln in 1860 could not have made the same geographic campaign tour because the first transcontinental railroad wasn’t finished until 1869. That’s a banal example. But it matters. Communication methods and the technology behind them change. There were no YouTube videos during the 1992 campaign between Bill Clinton and Old Man Bush.

Of course campaigns and political analysis have to adjust to technological innovations. But it’s important to keep the continuities as well as differences and the quantity-turns-into-quality factor.

Katja Muñoz writes with particular reference to the German and European political contexts:

So far, most parties in Germany have used artificial intelligence primarily for data analysis in the background. Huge amounts of voter and behavioral data are evaluated. This allows detailed voter profiles to be created and microtargeting to be carried out in a way that was previously impossible. This includes content analysis by AI image recognition systems, which scan publicly shared content for campaign-relevant information to create even more accurate pictures preferences and opinions. (5)

But more efficient microtargeting can multiply the risks of microtargeting. On the one hand, it’s useful. But the more diverse messaging that is out there, the greater the risk that the messages can step on each other, create confusion, and detract from the broader themes of a campaign. Populists and demagogues (right and left) tend to be good at driving home broad themes and building images that appeal to diverse constituencies.

In the US, Donald Trump is unfortunately good at promoting misanthropic themes that nevertheless appeal to the broad Republican constituency. While the Democrats are notorious for filling speeches with laundry lists of issues that attempt to micro-target various constituencies while failing to connect them with broader themes and images. And the effort to build a majority by distinct appeals to distinct groups can make it more difficult to build governing coalitions for particular goals.

Yes, AI affects elections. But it’s important to keep happens in mind the particulars of how that happens.

Notes:

(1) AI and Democracy. Brennan Center for Justice. <https://www.brennancenter.org/series/ai-and-democracy> (Accessed: 2024-14-07).

(2) Panditharatne, Mekela (2024): Preparing to Fight AI-Backed Voter Suppression. Brennan Center for Justice 04/16/2024. <https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/preparing-fight-ai-backed-voter-suppression> (Accessed: 2024-14-07).

(3) Jacobo, Julia (2024): India may have recorded its hottest temperature ever amid severe heat wave. ABC News 05/29/2024. <https://abcnews.go.com/International/india-records-hottest-temperature-amid-severe-heat-wave/story?id=110639547> (Accessed: 2024-14-07).

(4) Photo of map of Truman's 1948 Whistle Stop Tour (photo ca. 1948). Harry S. Truman Library and Museum. <https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/photograph-records/2006-175> (Accessed: 2024-14-07).

5) Muñoz, Katja (2024): Künstliche Intelligenz und Wahlen. Internationale Politik 78:4 (July-Aug 2024), 36-41. My (AI-assisted) translation from German.