Robocalls of President Biden already confused primary voters in New Hampshire – but measures to curb the technology could be too little too late
The AI election is here.
Already this year, a robocall generated using artificial intelligence targeted New Hampshire voters in the January primary, purporting to be President Joe Biden and telling them to stay home in what officials said could be the first attempt at using AI to interfere with a US election. The “deepfake” calls were linked to two Texas companies, Life Corporation and Lingo Telecom.
It’s not clear if the deepfake calls actually prevented voters from turning out, but that doesn’t really matter, said Lisa Gilbert, executive vice-president of Public Citizen, a group that’s been pushing for federal and state regulation of AI’s use in politics.
The answer to any article that asks, “is the U.S. prepared for ______,” is always no.
This isn’t even a Betteridge’s Law situation. America never prepares for anything because all our leaders care about is running for office.
Those lifetime appointments to the supreme court are really protecting that institution. /s
The issue is much deeper than elections.
Very true. Even if someone with a true progressive agenda got elected (a what-if for Bernie in 2016), they would have the entire government against them, especially SCOTUS. I don’t know how a President Sanders could have gotten much of his agenda through even though I voted for him.
In that specific instance, he would have had all the appointments Trump ended up with.
In 2020 though he would have been fighting the same uphill battle Biden has been.
Maybe. If his appointments got approved. Remember Obama and Merrick Garland?
Ahh… fuck, yeah, I forgot about that shit. What a cluster fuck. Also, it’s the frog. Hi squid!
It is indeed a clusterfuck. Also, hello!
There’s a shitload of selection bias at play there. When we do prepare for something and actually successfully prevent it, your brain won’t remember it for you, unless you try really hard.
So, it’s almost impossible to just figure out how well we prepare, using some kind of sniff test. Our human brains just royally suck at that specific kind of analysis.
By way of example, Biden’s recent investment into port security. If a problem never occurs now, are you going to give him a point for that, or just never really consider it again?
This is partly why the scientific method needs to be so strict, slow and rigorous to get anywhere.
And 4 years were spent breaking down lots of preparation that was already in place setting back decades.
If only there were something the electorate could do . . .
The electorate that the leaders have continued to convince represent them despite obviously not doing so for a very long time? Good luck with that.
Sorry, replied to wrong comment.
No worries.
This is just another attempt to divert from the actual issue.
No, it’s not AI. It’s desinformation that is the problem. People who believed and parroted badly spelled bullshit lies from some troll farm will keep doing so. They will not suddenly fall for AI generated propaganda because AI evolved to be that indistinguishable. They already fell for everything long before.
Sure… let’s discuss the risks of AI and how we need to regulate it instead of finally acknowledging that the problem is a lack of education and media competence in general.
Disinformation is the core issue, but isn’t that like saying “the fire is the problem, not the gasoline being poured on it.”
Nope.
Or to use you analogy: It’s like discussing bans of kerosin to fix the fire instead of acknowledging that they are pouring gasoline on it.
There are good reasons to discuss limiting AI. But this discussion is somewhere between stupidity and diversion. It will not change the fact that a lot of todays (especially social) media is running on narratives, bullshit and desinformation. That’s not new and AI will barely be able to make it even worse.
This none-topic is however very useful in ignoring the underlying issue (lack of media competence and education) and diverting from the actual risks of AI (surveilance).
I get your point. I would disagree that AI will “barely” make it worse, since it’s basically a tool to churn out disinformation at a higher order of magnitude than ever before. However, I do agree that targeting AI isn’t the solution; once the tools exist you can’t put them back in the box. We should be focusing on how to get our society to value truth again.
I pretty much agree.
Their argument that AI will impinge on the election, relies on the assumptions that a) people are currently getting good quality information And b) have the skills to process it.
I think we’ ve seen more obviously than ever, that’s just not the case. AI might be a bit of icing on the pudding, but not much more than that.
You said what I was thinking as a read the title!
Just waiting for some dipshit to use AI deepfake of Biden saying “by executive order, all guns and ammunition are now illegal” with a nice sora video of the national guard kicking down doors and shooting people, followed by pictures of shuttered gun stores
Doesnt matter that he cant do that with an executive order, what matters is how gullible people are if you trigger them properly
Lol, we’re still not prepared to handle the misinformation Uncle Clide types up on Facebook with his own two thumbs.
This will continue to be a dumpster fire.
Is the US prepared? No
But we better pull our heads out and figure this shit out.
Where’s a rock I can hide under, until December?
Don’t hide, Vote.
Oh, I have and will continue to do so.
It’s just the TV ads have gotten so vitriolic they make watching a sit-com painful.
I ran to the rocks and hide my face
the rock cried out ‘No hiding place’
there’s no hiding place down here.
Preparation looks like producing as many of these fakes now in exactly the way bad actors will use them until we are forced to confront this problem. Without satire.
