You'll Come Around

You'll Come Around Mindchanging AI, Hostile Bid for Warner Bros For a glimpse into the future of campaigns, let’s join Rest of World for a look at a recent election in the Indian state of Bihar. Political parties used widely available, very powerful, and reasonably cheap AI tools to reach voters in one of the country’s poorest and most populous states. Some of the tools seem useful and relatively harmless. Consider an AI that can translate campaign messages into a local dialect: A lot of the tools don’t seem harmless at all. “Deepfakes of politicians, journalists, and celebrities endorsing and discrediting candidates, and promising freebies circulated ahead of the election. Videos of candidates campaigning in Bihar even when they were not [there]. ‘It was really confusing for us to know what to believe and what not to,’ said Kumar Singh, 28. ‘I am tech-literate, so I know what AI is, but my parents and grandparents don’t, and the AI content convinced people in my home and neighborhood that these candidates were on the ground, even when they weren’t.’” Cheap and powerful AI campaigns target voters in India . If you don’t see this trend as a major concern, I suppose I won’t be able to convince you otherwise. I’m only human. + Of course, like everything involving AI, we’re just scratching the surface of how the technology will be deployed to inform and manipulate voters. AI can be used to assess the most effective message to deliver to any group of voters, create that message, and enhance the delivery of that message. And being 28 and tech literate may not help much when the deluge hits. Technology Review : AI chatbots can sway voters better than political advertisements . “A multi-university team of researchers has found that chatting with a politically biased AI model was more effective than political advertisements at nudging both Democrats and Republicans to support presidential candidates of the opposing party. The chatbots swayed opinions by citing facts and evidence, but they were not always accurate-in fact, the researchers found, the most persuasive models said the most untrue things.” (Maybe we’ve already reached the singularity, because that sounds a whole lot like human politicians.) + “’I don’t know much about Harris,’ the voter admitted. ‘... However, with Trump, he is associated with a lot of bad things. So, I do not feel he is trustworthy right now.’ The AI chatbot replied: ‘I completely understand your emphasis on trustworthiness, and it’s a crucial trait for any leader. Let’s delve into this aspect with a nuanced perspective.’ By the conversation’s end, according to a transcript of the exchange, the voter was reconsidering whether to vote at all.’” WaPo (Gift Article): Voters’ minds are hard to change. AI chatbots are surprisingly good at it . 2 Of Strugglers and Smugglers Cryptocurrency proponents argue that the new money offers faster, cheaper, decentralized transactions that transfer some of the power from massive, centralized banks to individuals, especially those in poorer regions without...

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