What to know about AI and the upcoming elections
OpenAI’s Mira Murati and the secretaries of state from Arizona and Georgia weigh in on challenges, opportunities, and threats posed by emerging technology
- Image Will Kirk
Adrian Fontes, Arizona’s secretary of state, calls the election role-playing exercise he coordinated to prepare for the coming elections, “Dungeons & Dragons for election administrators.”
The program brought together election officials, vendors, law enforcement members, and officials from local, state, and federal agencies to consider scenarios that could affect voting, including an AI-generated video of Fontes sharing false information.
“We could make folks familiar with the fact that [deepfake AI videos] exist. Here’s what it looks like, smells like, tastes like, so that if it does emerge during the actual election season, they won’t be surprised by it,” Fontes said during a recent event held at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center.
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Fontes was joined by his counterpart in Georgia, Brad Raffensperger, and Johns Hopkins University President Ron Daniels for a panel discussion about AI and the coming election, moderated by veteran tech reporter Kara Swisher. Following their conversation, Swisher interviewed Mira Murati, OpenAI’s chief technology officer. The event was the first of four in a yearlong partnership between JHU, Swisher, and Vox Media that kicks off the new Discovery Series at the Hopkins Bloomberg Center.
Here are four key takeaways from their conversations:
- Media literacy remains key
Daniels spoke of Johns Hopkins students—young people who are internet natives—learning how to assess the information they see online. “It’s about giving them the power of discernment,” he said. “There is this deluge of information, but I think there is still the capacity to help them navigate this environment and to be able to identify materials, identify sources that are more reliable and that they should act upon, whether as a voter or even in terms of their basic coursework.”
- Democracy is good for business
Fontes urged private companies to do their part to support free and fair elections and democratic principles, not for moral reasons, but for business ones. “Find me a totalitarian or authoritarian regime where entrepreneurs can thrive,” Fontes said.
- A focus on bolstering trust
Georgia has had a number of contested elections in recent years, leaving both Democrats and Republicans skeptical. Raffensperger said he’s countered this by taking a “belt and suspenders” approach to ensuring election integrity, through a combination of logic and accuracy testing before voting and equipment monitoring across precincts during voting.
- A three-pronged approach
Murati said OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, has three focus areas when it comes to protecting election integrity:
- Preventing abuse by monitoring the platform and taking quick action as necessary.
- Reducing political bias, after receiving criticism that ChatGPT is too liberal.
- Pointing people toward correct information about voting.