This sure has been a weekend of geeking out and relaxing. I can’t stop listening to the new Beyoncé album. I’ve gone down a rabbit hole reading everything, realizing I never saw her performance with the Chicks in 2016, which caused the backlash that inspired this album.
I am also geeking out over an AI and elections event I attended this past week. I just spent an hour or two reviewing the transcript of an event Aspen Digital and the Columbia Institute for Global Politics held in New York City on Thursday about the topic.
I found the remarks from OpenAI, Google, Meta, and Microsoft most interesting. I ended up with 17 takeaways, which I share below. I wanted to put their corresponding quotes next to each, but that would have made for a long newsletter. Instead, I put those here, and I highly encourage you to read it or, even better, watch the full event at this link.
Part of the reason OpenAI didn't open source its model is out of concern about how it could be used to interfere with elections.
It is important to distinguish between the companies that build the tools that generate AI content—like OpenAI—and those that distribute content.
Katie's side note: We also need to look at online distribution methods and television, radio and other offline means.
OpenAI recently took down a bunch of state actors who were using their tools.
GenZ is looking for social signals to determine if something is fake or not.
People look for social signals to determine their trust in content, and we need to pay attention to synthetic accounts in addition to synthetic content.
We need new mental models to think about authority and authenticity in the AI age.
People are mostly watching videos, so adversaries are putting video content out.
The simplest manipulations will travel the furthest on the internet.
AI-generated fake content is more dangerous in private than public domains.
The medium matters a lot when considering AI. AI-generated audio is the one to be worried about.
The most effective content is not fully synthetic but a mix of real and fake.
Context and timing are important. People are more likely to believe fake content when news is breaking.
We need to raise the cost for the adversary to interfere rather than raise the cost on ourselves to protect democracy.
The threat landscape has gotten larger and more diverse.
Operations are increasingly more domestic and commercialized.
The AI techniques we fear are being used more by scammers and spammers. Look to them for how those who want to influence the information environment will eventually do so.
Watermarking can help identify AI-generated content across encrypted platforms.
On top of all this the company I’m at - Duco - is hiring! You can see all the listings here for:
Senior Director, Digital Threats & Intelligence
Business Assistant
Tech Policy Associate
Business Lead
The Senior Director will report to me so let me know if you have any questions!
The Center for Humanitarian Dialogue is also hiring and asked me to share their role for a Project Manager – Social Media and Conflict Mediation with you all.
Happy Easter to all who celebrate. I’m on the shore this weekend, where my new patio furniture was delivered, and I can’t wait to hang out on my porch this summer and look at the water.
My new porch furniture!
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What I’m Reading
📽️Columbia Institute of Global Politics & Aspen Digital: AI's Impact on the 2024 Global Elections
📽️Campaigns And Elections/GW Panel: Ethics in Political Communication
📽️Sciences Po: Démocratie.ai: Launch of the Free Institute for Digital Transformations at Sciences Po
🎙️The Voting Booth Podcast: Free Speech, Regulation of Speech, and Elections (with Eugene Volokh)
Pew Internet: What Can Improve Democracy?
Politico: AI: Inside the shadowy global battle to tame the world's most dangerous technology
Axios: Shards of glass: Inside media's 12 splintering realities
Forbes: Lawmakers’ Angry Statements About TikTok Could Hamstring Their Ban
Washington Post Tech Friend: TikTok is turning you into its lobbyist
TIME: What to Know About Meta’s ‘Political Content’ Limit—and How to Turn It Off on Instagram
FedScoop: White House unveils AI governance policy focused on risks, transparency
The Hill: 20 have been charged for threatening election workers around the country: Feds
ABC News: States are cracking down on deepfakes ahead of the 2024 election
The Hill: New Hampshire House passes AI election rules after Biden deepfake
Allbritton Journalism Institute: How a Former Democratic Operative Is Testing the Limits of What a Newsroom Can Be
NewsGuard: Pink Slime Time: Election Year Launches of Secretly Partisan Local News
The Checklist: Global election follow-up from Meedan
Politico: Disinformation has become the single biggest threat to electoral integrity
EU Disinfo Lab: Fighting web disinformation – the good, the bad and the pointless
Daily Trust: Artificial Intelligence and the integrity of African elections
Hackernoon: Brazil Implements Regulations on AI Usage in Elections
Alethea: Writing with Invisible Ink: Russia's Newest Disinformation Tactic
LPE Project: Social Media, Authoritarianism, and the World As It Is
Just Security: How to Combat Emerging Global Social Media Manipulation in 2024
ScrippsNews: Russian intelligence controls warlord's disinformation empire with AI
Washington Post: The Futurist Summit: The New Age of Tech: The Age of AI with Anna Makanju
TechCrunch: Amazon will have to publish an ads library in EU after all
Politico: Meet Simon Harris, Ireland’s first TikTok prime minister
Politico: TikTok curtails German far right’s top EU election candidate
Euractive: EU Commission issues guidelines for addressing digital risks to elections
European Parliament Research Service: Artificial intelligence [What Think Tanks are thinking]
Google: Our 2023 Ads Safety Report
Psych of Tech: What on social media is bad for the world?
Federal Register Request for Information: Methods and Leading Practices for Advancing Public Participation and Community Engagement With the Federal Government
Washington Post: Gen Z embraces side hustles because 'loyalty is dead'
Center for the Advanced Study of India: Decolonizing Indian International Relations: Postcolonial Populists and Ethical Quandaries
Scroll India: Why a government-run 'fact-checking' unit has been stayed by the Supreme Court
Meta: How Meta Is Preparing For Indian General Elections 2024
Gadget South Africa: Facebook prepares to combat election fakes
Zach Seward: AI news that's fit to print
University of Washington: The Center for an Informed Public’s election research in 2024
Center for Democracy and Technology: CDT Joins Mozilla, Civil Society Orgs, and Leading Academics in Urging U.S. Secretary of Commerce to Protect AI Openness
Please support the curation and analysis I’m doing with this newsletter. As a paid subscriber, you make it possible for me to bring you in-depth analyses of the most pressing issues in tech and politics.