This year, close to half the world’s population has the opportunity to participate in an election. And according to a steady stream of pundits, institutions, academics, and news organizations, there’s a major new threat to the integrity of those elections: artificial intelligence.
The earliest predictions warned that a new AI-powered world was, apparently, propelling us toward a “tech-enabled Armageddon” where “elections get screwed up”, and that “anybody who’s not worried [was] not paying attention.” The internet is full of doom-laden stories proclaiming that AI-generated deepfakes will mislead and influence voters, as well as enabling new forms of personalized and targeted political advertising. Though such claims are concerning, it is critical to look at the evidence. With a substantial number of this year’s elections concluded, it is a good time to ask how accurate these assessments have been so far. The preliminary answer seems to be not very; early alarmist claims about AI and elections appear to have been blown out of proportion.
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Source: AI’s impact on elections is being overblown | MIT Technology Review