How weaponizing AI could alter the outcomes of elections
Marketplace Tech
American Public Media
4.6 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 29 June 2023
⏱️ 9 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Politics is a game in which the truth often gets stretched. But new artificial intelligence tools are making it easy for anyone to bend reality into a pretzel. AI-generated video, still images and fundraising emails are already popping up on the campaign trail. There are fake photos of Donald Trump embracing Dr. Anthony Fauci, exaggerated dystopian Toronto cityscapes and a stock photo of a woman with a curious surplus of arms. The threat goes beyond the occasional extra appendage or incendiary but obvious deepfake, says Mike Hamilton, co-founder of cybersecurity firm Critical Insight. He spoke with Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino about AI’s power to enable election manipulators to finely target specific groups of voters with disinformation.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Marketplace Morning Reports new Skin in the Game series explores what we can learn about |
| 0:04.6 | money and careers from the $300 billion video game industry. Plus, here how an Oakland-based |
| 0:11.0 | program helps young people get the skills they need to break into this booming industry. |
| 0:15.9 | Listen to Skin in the Game and more from the Marketplace Morning Report wherever you get your |
| 0:20.7 | podcasts. What happens when the AI boom meets the 2024 elections? From American public media, |
| 0:29.7 | this is Marketplace Tech. I'm Megan McCarty-Karino. |
| 0:42.2 | Politics is a game where the truth often gets stretched a bit, but new artificial intelligence |
| 0:49.1 | tools are making it easy for anyone to bend reality into pretzels. AI-generated video images |
| 0:57.1 | and fundraising emails are already popping up on the campaign trail. Fake photos of Donald Trump |
| 1:03.9 | embracing Dr. Anthony Fauci exaggerated dystopian cityscapes of Toronto and a stock photo of a woman |
| 1:12.7 | with a curious surplus of arms. It's a threat that goes beyond the occasional extra appendage or |
| 1:20.9 | obviously incendiary deep fake, so as Mike Hamilton, the co-founder of security firm Critical Insight. |
| 1:28.1 | The biggest threat to me would be assisting in identifying soft targets for disinformation. |
| 1:35.3 | So not only are you throwing out the messaging that, hey, your election day has changed or |
| 1:41.6 | whatever, but it's knowing exactly what targets to hang that in front of that will produce the |
| 1:47.1 | greatest return on the investment. Right. I mean, this is something that's sort of been increasing |
| 1:52.9 | on a spectrum for years. We saw this, you know, kind of with the Cambridge Analytica finding, |
| 1:59.6 | I guess, what they call persuadables and targeting information. I mean, like, what is the worst case |
| 2:04.6 | scenario? What is kind of the next level in this that keeps you up at night? Here is what is in the |
| 2:09.6 | back of my mind. There have been large unauthorized disclosures of personally identifiable information |
| 2:16.1 | from the Office of Personnel Management and from Equifax and when the SolarWinds global incident |
| 2:24.1 | was underway, there was very intentional theft of a lot of federal agency records. |
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