AI and deception on the political trail

[Scarlet Rose]

Interesting article on the implications and consequences that utilization of AI could have for political campaigns. Given what we have seen from the utilization of social media and how political ads have often had a questionable relationship with reality I wouldn't be surprised if it did play out this way. It is still discouraging reading and I hope they are wrong.

6 ways AI can make political campaigns more deceptive than ever

Politicians and their campaigns use a lot of methods, including manipulation and deception, to persuade you to vote for them and give them money. AI promises to make those attempts more effective.

theconversation.com

 

[DrLeftover]

You mean politicians need help lying to the people?

damn

 

[Scarlet Rose]

You mean politicians need help lying to the people?

damn

The part of it I found more troubling was how it could potentially enable them to better tailor their lies based on individual browsing histories. I am not going to pretend there isn't deceit happening at the moment. Whether this comes from overpromising or outright lying, it isn't something I want to see become more targeted and influential.

Bogus custom campaign promises​

My research on the 2020 presidential election revealed that the choice voters made between Biden and Trump was driven by their perceptions of which candidate “proposes realistic solutions to problems” and “says out loud what I am thinking,” based on 75 items in a survey. These are two of the most important qualities for a candidate to have to project a presidential image and win.

AI chatbots, such as ChatGPT by OpenAI, Bing Chat by Microsoft, and Bard by Google, could be used by politicians to generate customized campaign promises deceptively microtargeting voters and donors.

Currently, when people scroll through news feeds, the articles are logged in their computer history, which are tracked by sites such as Facebook. The user is tagged as liberal or conservative, and also tagged as holding certain interests. Political campaigns can place an ad spot in real time on the person’s feed with a customized title.

Campaigns can use AI to develop a repository of articles written in different styles making different campaign promises. Campaigns could then embed an AI algorithm in the process – courtesy of automated commands already plugged in by the campaign – to generate bogus tailored campaign promises at the end of the ad posing as a news article or donor solicitation.

ChatGPT, for instance, could hypothetically be prompted to add material based on text from the last articles that the voter was reading online. The voter then scrolls down and reads the candidate promising exactly what the voter wants to see, word for word, in a tailored tone. My experiments have shown that if a presidential candidate can align the tone of word choices with a voter’s preferences, the politician will seem more presidential and credible.

 

[DrLeftover]

You mean like Mr. Obama promising to close the Guantanamo Bay prison for terrorists?


It is still open, although the population of bad guys has been reduced.

 

[Scarlet Rose]

Yep, the differences between Obama on the campaign trail and when he took presidency would definitely be one of them. He presented himself as a lot more left leaning and progressive than how he served his terms as president. Including times when the Democrats controlled both chambers. But it is neither unique to one party, nor the US. We see it here in New Zealand too with parties not following through on their campaigning. Either underdelivering or pulling a 180. Although I doubt we will see much implementation of AI in our election this year in New Zealand. We tend to lag behind the US when it comes to cultural changes with electoral politics.