SwissCognitive Guest Blogger: Zachary Amos – “How AI Will Impact 2024 Elections”

Generative artificial intelligence — models that can create images, videos, audio or text — have become incredibly popular because they’re widely available, easy to use and fast. Unfortunately, their greatest features are also threats. Will this technology permanently improve elections or unfairly sway the polls in one candidate’s favor?

AI’s Impact on Elections Is Global

2024 is a pivotal election year — not just for the United States but the world. Residents of over 50 countries will visit the polls this year alone, including Mexico, South Korea, the United Kingdom, India, South Africa, Taiwan and the European Union.

While most voters have come to expect — and know how to spot — attack ads, online trolling and misinformation around election time, AI has brought the world into uncharted waters. Generative models can create convincing images and videos with only one minute of audio or a few lines of text.

An AI-generated deepfake — real content that has been digitally manipulated with AI — is another massive concern. This technology replaces one person’s likeness or voice with a synthetic alternative.

According to one recent survey, about 78% of people believe bad actors will use AI to influence the U.S. presidential election outcome, with 70% thinking they’ll generate fake information and 62% assuming they’ll convince people not to vote.

AI’s Negative Impacts on Elections

There’s no downplaying AI’s negative impacts on elections.

Disinformation

Most people learn about candidates and current events from social media and internet headlines. In the United States, 82% of adults get their daily news from a digital device. This is an issue in an age where bad actors can create AI-generated disinformation almost instantly.

The Center for Countering Digital Hate, a British nonprofit, recently tested six of the leading AI voice cloning tools. Each produced fake audio snippets of high-profile politicians, with 80% of the tests generating a convincing clip.

Algorithmic Bias

AI systems can learn to make biased decisions if their training data contains skewed or inaccurate information or variables like gender, age, race or sexuality. Algorithms could act with prejudice if governments use this technology to accelerate vote counting or check voter eligibility.

Deepfakes

Divyendra Singh Jadoun is known as the “Indian Deepfaker” for his work on Bollywood clips and TV commercials. Recently, he claimed hundreds of Indian politicians sought his services ahead of the country’s elections, with 50% making unethical requests like defamation or deception. He says he denied them but doesn’t doubt others would accept their offers.

A deepfake can place a politician’s likeness over any body, face and voice to make it seem like they said or did something they never have. Politicians can — and have — used fake videos to make their opponents less likable. They even use AI on themselves to cast doubt on any real wrongdoings that might surface, giving them plausible deniability.

Fake Accounts

AI-powered social media bots spread misinformation and subconsciously influence voters by posting comments, sharing articles, and liking posts about certain politicians or upcoming elections.

Examples of AI Impacting Elections

AI’s effect on elections isn’t just hypothetical — it’s already happening. Of the 112 national elections in the United Kingdom between 2023 and 2024, 19 show signs of AI interference so far. When considering the evidence of AI-generated disinformation, that figure increases.

In Slovakia, days before the election — which was to determine who would lead the country — an audio clip of one of the leading candidates spread online. In it, he bragged about rigging the election. His opponent ended up defeating him.

In the United States, a former political consultant robocalled New Hampshire voters with an AI-generated voice meant to mimic President Biden, directing them not to vote. It reached thousands of people just ahead of the presidential primary. The man faces criminal and felony charges, along with a steep $6 million fine issued by the Federal Communications Commission.

Although the number of voters influenced in these situations remains unclear, one thing is certain — they were affected by AI interference. Going forward, cases like these aren’t going to be outliers. Instead, they may become as routine as attack ads and fake news posts.

AI’s Positive Impacts on Elections

It turns out AI might not be all bad — it still stands to positively impact the election.

Heightened Awareness

People aware of AI’s capabilities may be more likely to approach social media posts, news articles and viral clips with greater skepticism. Their newfound tendency to fact-check content can protect them from disinformation.

Election Administration

AI-powered systems could help administer elections, accelerating the time it takes to count votes, register voters or remind the general public of upcoming election dates. Considering these processes are typically so time-consuming, streamlining and automating them could be substantially beneficial.

Voter Education

Governments can offer AI tools to help voters stay informed. A machine learning model can pull up the latest news, fact-check social media posts, summarize news articles or identify AI-generated content.

AI-Generated Content Will Influence Elections

While rampant disinformation around election time isn’t new, it was obvious to those who could spot the telltale signs of Photoshop or traditional digital manipulation tactics. Now, generative models have muddied the waters. How can people tell what’s real anymore? What happens when politicians shrug off real scandals as some AI-generated hoax?

The question isn’t whether the AI’s positive impacts outweigh its negatives — it’s how to combat bad actors using this technology. Generative and machine-learning models are here to stay, so voters, governments and politicians should work together to figure out how to handle them. Swift, collaborative action may soon be the only thing ensuring fair elections.

About the Author:

Zachary Amos is the Features Editor at ReHack, where he writes about artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and other technology-related topics.

Der Beitrag How AI Could Impact The 2024 Elections erschien zuerst auf SwissCognitive | AI Ventures, Advisory & Research.

Copyright: intelligentautomationcorp.com – “How IAC (Intelligence Automation Company) delivered 30% IT cost saving to a Fortune 2000 client”

The IAC Team: They are recognized as global experts and pioneers in the field of intelligent automation. One of the team wrote ‘the’ reference guide for the intelligence automation industry.
At AIC they operate a “Safe pair of hands“ global delivery model with a centre in Southeast Asia (Philippines), Central Asia (India), and Eastern Europe (Slovakia)

The Client:

The client is a leading Fortune 2000 workspace provider. They deliver coworking solutions to more than 2 million people, from more than 3 thousand locations across 6 continents, and have been in the workplace business since 1989. The client’s unrivalled footprint, and unique customer proposition, continue to drive their growth and enable the creation of an entire ecosystem that supports businesses on a local and global level.

The Opportunity

The client operates a distributed IT system and leverages a 3rd party IT vendor. The IT vendor manages the support of all network devices, data centres, technological infrastructure, and workplace IT solutions. The client compensates the 3rd party vendor for the number of support tickets created, devices supported, transaction count, and T&M for special projects. The business effort required in operating a distributed IT model, with a massive footprint of customers using workplace services, and the client’s 10,000+ global employees demands a hefty operating cost paid to the 3rd party IT vendor.

The Risks

The client is risk-averse to any technological integration or changes due to the sensitivity of
the distributed IT model, the scale at which it operates and the cost it would take to deliver an
optimization program. Suffice to say that the client is not
comfortable getting into agreements with another company that might lock them into a costly
contract. IAC laid out a win-win framework that established a clear pathway for success with zero risk to the client.

IAC zero-risk and outcome-based approach

One of the primary challenges for the client is down to the fact that their data is highly unstructured and multilingual. That complexity presents a major roadblock when accurately identifying any potential business impact.

To build a compelling business case, IAC executed a world-class discovery methodology utilizing a variety of emerging technologies.

First, their data science team ran a detailed program to clean and transform the client’s data to make it more manageable and liquid.

They then utilized in-house machine learning clustering and text mining techniques to successfully structure the data.

The data transformation led them to accurately identify large automation opportunities and highlighted key automation use cases that could be leveraged and implemented.

IAC confidently built a 30% cost reduction business case proposal and got into a gain share agreement with the client that stipulated no financial commitment on their end until outcomes aligned to the business case materialized.[…]

To read the whole case study, send a request to office@iac.ai

Der Beitrag Case Study: How IAC (Intelligence Automation Company) delivered 30% IT cost saving to a Fortune 2000 client erschien zuerst auf SwissCognitive | AI Ventures, Advisory & Research.