Democracy Compromised
AI-based political manipulation has now begun to compromise our democracy. We have entered into a new dystopian reality of rubber-stamping leaders that we have been manipulated into backing.
“Donald Trump is a 78-year-old convicted felon who has been found liable for sexual assault and, prior to his reelection, was under indictment in a number of jurisdictions. He refused to leave office peacefully when voters elected President Joe Biden in 2020, instead launching an unprecedented attack on the U.S. Capitol to stop the counting of electoral votes, and said during his campaign that he would be a “dictator” on his first day in office.”
This paragraph, taken from Historian Heather Cox Richardson’s November 6, 2024 letter made me take pause. I had to think about how this could happen. These are all simple facts -- but the point of my article is not to denigrate our president-elect (he does that well enough, on his own). Rather, it's to open a discussion about something else that is far more sinister. The reelection of someone with the resume of Donald Trump would have been exceedingly improbably at any time in past American history. It is unfathomable that Americans in any prior generation would have elected a person of such moral turpitude as president of the United States of America, regardless of any perceived policy issues.
But times have changed -- and , especially, technology has changed. There is a war going on behind the scenes that may be the most consequential and dangerous war we have ever faced, as a nation.
Our political process has been hijacked by both foreign and domestic actors who have created a flood of disinformation that influences voters to align with a certain position. This isn't new news -- it has been happening in the U.S. for years now. Russian political theorists refer to the development of a virtual political reality using modern media as “political technology.” While tactically diverse, the key to their approach is using social media and AI in the creation of a false narrative as a means of controlling public debate.
AI-based political manipulation has now begun to compromise our democracy. We have inadvertently transitioned from the fundamental idea of voters choosing their leaders into a new dystopian reality of voters rubber-stamping leaders that they have been manipulated into backing.
There were legitimate issues in this election that created momentum for president-elect Trump — in particular, the economy. But, to use that as an example, there was an incredible amount of mis- and dis-information that painted a picture of our current economy that was patently false — and it was used to influence voters along the way. Most of this misinformation was bandied about in the form of meme’s and posts on social media, an environment that has increasingly become near fully absent of any coeherent level of fact-checking or policing.
In September 2024, US Intelligence officials warned that propagandists in China, Iran and Russia are using artificial intelligence to create content designed to deceive Americans ahead of the November presidential election.
In a clear example of this, the Forensics Hub at Clemson University recently issued a report that details an ongoing social media influence campaign on the X platform employing AI powered bots to influence political conversations in U.S. federal elections. This inauthentic network included at least 686 accounts, and likely more. The campaign uses large language models to create organic-seeming content in the replies of real users’ posts. Taking on conservative persona and perspectives, the campaign targeted both Republican candidates (in primaries) and Democrats (in generals) in addition to advocating for specific issues.
In February 2024, Zeve Sanderson, executive director of New York University’s Center for Social Media and Politics, told Scientific American “Social media lowered the cost for disseminating misinformation or information. AI is lowering the cost for producing it . . . Now, whether you’re a foreign malign actor or a part of a smaller domestic campaign, you’re able to use these technologies to produce multimedia content that’s going to be somewhat compelling.”
Shortly after the election, these bot accounts went suddenly silent. Their job was done. But the damage remains for Americans to clean up. And unless we put measures in place on social media to prevent this from happening, we may never again have a fair election in the US.
https://substack.com/home/post/p-151306457?source=queue
https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/virtual-politics-and-the-corruption-post-soviet-democracy?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/republican-bot-campaign-trump-x-twitter-elon-musk-fake-accounts-rcna173692
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/russia-iran-china-are-using-ai-election-interference-efforts-us-intell-rcna172476
https://open.clemson.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1006&context=mfh_reports
https://www.dw.com/en/2024-us-election-ai-driven-social-media-bots-donald-trump-supporters/a-70695526
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/10/toxic-x-users-sabotage-community-notes-that-could-derail-disinfo-report-says/
https://cybernews.com/news/ai-driven-bot-network-supporting-trump-x/