Sunday, June 25, 2023

News bits: AI influence in elections increases; Poll data; Supreme Court corruption

The rise of the dark side: The NYT reports about the increasing presence of AI in political campaigns worldwide:

In Toronto, a candidate in this week’s mayoral election who vows to clear homeless encampments released a set of campaign promises illustrated by artificial intelligence, including fake dystopian images of people camped out on a downtown street and a fabricated image of tents set up in a park.

In Chicago, the runner-up in the mayoral vote in April complained that a Twitter account masquerading as a news outlet had used A.I. to clone his voice in a way that suggested he condoned police brutality.

What began a few months ago as a slow drip of fund-raising emails and promotional images composed by A.I. for political campaigns has turned into a steady stream of campaign materials created by the technology, rewriting the political playbook for democratic elections around the world.

Increasingly, political consultants, election researchers and lawmakers say setting up new guardrails, such as legislation reining in synthetically generated ads, should be an urgent priority. Existing defenses, such as social media rules and services that claim to detect A.I. content, have failed to do much to slow the tide.  
As the 2024 U.S. presidential race starts to heat up, some of the campaigns are already testing the technology. The Republican National Committee released a video with artificially generated images of doomsday scenarios after President Biden announced his re-election bid, while Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida posted fake images of former President Donald J. Trump with Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former health official. The Democratic Party experimented with fund-raising messages drafted by artificial intelligence in the spring — and found that they were often more effective at encouraging engagement and donations than copy written entirely by humans.

The article goes on to point out that sophisticated AI content is appearing more frequently on social networks because those sources are unwilling or unable to police it. Weak, ineffective oversight of social media content allows unlabeled AI material to do irreversible damage. Explaining fakery, lies and slanders to millions of users after they see it is too little, too late, and from what I can tell, it's probably not even possible.

So, we all know what is going to happen in the good 'ole broken US of A with its broken government and a morally rotted major political party that depends heavily on deceit, irrational manipulation and brazen crackpot conspiracy blither for its power. Nothing to regulate AI is going to happen. 

For radical right Republicans and their radical candidates, their 2024 campaigns will be loaded with AI-generated images, voices and rhetoric designed to deceive, distract, demoralize, confuse and slander democrats, democracy, the rule of law and civil liberties. For both major parties, AI content will be better at fund raising, so both are disincentivized to regulate AI. We're in a race to the bottom. The two parties consolidate power and win, while the public interest and democracy lose.

And, there's this fun observation by Josh A. Goldstein, a research fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology: “If people can’t trust their eyes and ears, they may just say, ‘Who knows?’ This could foster a move from healthy skepticism that encourages good habits (like lateral reading and searching for reliable sources) to an unhealthy skepticism that it is impossible to know what is true.”

Hannah Arendt referring to the effects of
totalitarian propaganda decades before AI came on the scene
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The 2024 presidential Binden v. DJT election update: Poll data continues to indicate that the Repubs will nominate DJT. The Indictment has not hurt him yet. Playing the innocent, persecuted martyr seems to go over well with the MAGA cult. The Hill writes about polling data from April and June:


Although Biden has low approval, about 42% at present (about 43% among registered or likely voters) it seems likely he will be the Dem nominee unless something derails him or Newsome or Michelle Obama runs. These days, approval of a president below 50% seems to be the new normal.
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A WaPo opinion piece by Jennifer Rubin discussed a phone interview with Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) regarding the corruption of the Supreme Court. Central to the opinion was analysis of Sam Alito's defense of his own blatant corruption in situations just like what Clarence Thomas claims are not corrupt. The weakness of Alito's defense of himself is arrogant and deeply insulting. Alito really thinks we are stupid. The opinion opines
The senator ticked off the problems with Alito’s argument: factual omissions (e.g., the standard for exempt gifts does not include transportation); Alito’s lame effort to turn an airplane into a “facility” to jam it into an exempt-gift category (“It doesn’t pass the laugh test,” Whitehouse said); Alito’s plea that he couldn’t possibly have known Singer had a financial stake ($2 billion) in the outcome of a case before the court (although it was widely reported in the media); and the insistence that yet another billionaire was a “friend,” which somehow absolved him from his obligation to report gifts of “hospitality.” And, Whitehouse argued, it strains credulity that Alito (like Justice Clarence Thomas) could be confused about reporting requirements when there is a Financial Disclosure Committee expressly set up to help judges navigate these issues.

All in all, the poorly reasoned argument amounted to what Whitehouse called “a painful exhibit for an actual ethics code.” A bill he co-authored with Judiciary Chairman Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), set to be marked up after July 4, would confirm that the code of ethics applicable to all judges applies to the high court, set up a process for screening ethics complaints and allow chief judges of the circuit to advise on how their circuits handle similar matters. This is “not remotely unconstitutional,” he noted. Whitehouse wryly remarked that the last thing the justices want is a comparison to circuit courts’ conduct. “The best way to show that a stick is crooked is to lay a straight stick alongside it,” he said.
Whitehouse has long maintained that the court’s unprincipled, outcome-oriented and partisan decision-making is very much linked to the ethics problems. “The ethics problem is not just relevant to expensive gifts and fancy vacations,” he told me. The ethics issues “don’t occur in a vacuum,” he said. They point to “a bigger enterprise whose purpose is to capture the court.”
It is good to see pro-corruption arguments side-by-side with facts that show the arguments to be false. Whitehouse makes a good argument that Supreme Court corruption does not occur in a vacuum, but reflects the bigger authoritarian radical right effort to capture the Supreme Court. An obvious question is whether the authoritarian effort already has captured the court. Look to me like it has.
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Defense against the dark arts in Australia: ABC News reports on a draft bill that would punish online misinformation, including accidental misinformation:
Online platforms spreading misinformation could face millions of dollars in penalties under new proposed government legislation that bolsters the power of Australia's media watchdog.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) would be armed with the ability to require digital platforms to keep certain records about matters regarding misinformation and disinformation and turn them over when requested.

Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said this would "essentially mean that the regulator is able to look under the hood of what the platforms are doing and what measures they are taking to ensure compliance".

According to the draft bill, misinformation is defined as unintentionally false, misleading or deceptive content.
That bit about fining accidental misinformation seems a bit of an overreach, but in general something like this is what it will take to address deceit and misinformation online. Companies will not do it on their own. 

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