How Candidates Could Use AI for Good
This essay was written with Nathan E. Sanders, and originally appeared in The Guardian . There are plenty of signs that AI will make all of our experiences of the US midterm elections worse. Voters have anxiety about AI’s impacts on the country. Politicos are using AI deepfakes to spread lies. The White House is posting slopaganda . Meanwhile, candidates are missing a real opportunity to use AI…
The article discusses the potential benefits of using artificial intelligence (AI) technology in US political campaigns. While AI has been used to spread misinformation and create misleading propaganda, there are also opportunities for the technology to improve the campaigning process. Candidates can use AI to listen more deeply to voter concerns, engage constituents more inclusively, and create policy platforms that respond to public input.
Examples of AI being used for this purpose exist outside of the US, such as the Japanese political party Team Mirai, which has developed AI tools for conducting in-depth conversations with voters and scaling this across various policy issues. Team Mirai describes itself as a "utility party", focused on providing tools for any political party to connect with voters. They have had success, winning 12 seats in the Diet by using AI to engage constituents in legislative committee hearings and publish their input back to voters.
Other organizations, such as CrownShy and the US-affiliated deliberation.io and Cortico project, are also developing AI tools for scaling many-to-many conversations and facilitating structured dialogues among large groups of participants. These tools are generally open-source and intended to make democratic processes better, not just for partisan political advantage.
There are already US-developed tools available for candidates to use, including deliberation.io, Cortico, Talk to the City, and Remesh. Despite the potential benefits, polarization in US politics has led to a divide between those who are skeptical of AI and those who see it as a way to improve democratic processes. The article calls for separating the technology from its profiteers and urging both voters and politicians to hold AI companies accountable for the harm their models cause.
Written by urgent.news from Schneier on Security's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
