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1 AI Insight Forum: Elections and Democracy 1 (2023)

handle is hein.election/aiisgtelns0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Al Insight Forum: Elections & Democracy Statement of Lawrence D. Norden Senior Director, Elections and Government, Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law November 8, 2023 Majority Leader Schumer, Senators Rounds, Heinrich and Young: Thank you for the opportunity to discuss the critical question of how Artificial Intelligence (AI) will reshape the landscape of American electoral processes and democratic governance. For over a year, the Brennan Center has explored this question, partnering with technical experts and election officials to understand the ways in which Al may impact American democracy, and to identify steps that government, private and nonprofit sectors should take to minimize the dangers and increase the benefits of this powerful new technology. In my statement below, I look at the ways in which Al is likely to intersect with our democracy in five important arenas: the information environment for elections; election administration; election security; voter suppression; and participatory democracy. For each of these topics, I also offer suggestions for how Congress and federal agencies can maximize the benefit and reduce the harm of AI's extraordinary power. Al and the Information Environment for Elections New developments in Al are poised to disrupt and damage the information landscape surrounding elections in myriad ways. While machine-manipulated media has existed for years, malefactors can now create AI-generated deepfakes and other manipulated images and audio more cheaply, easily, and swiftly than before. Duplicitous actors have already used generative Al to spread scandalous falsehoods about a Chicago maoral candidate on the eve of an election and to possibly skew a national election in Slovakia. The use of deceptive AI-generated content by campaigns, PACs, and paid advertisers also poses a significant concern. From fakeries showing former President Trump hugging Anthony Fauci, to false depictions of a dystopic future under President Biden, to fabrications of candidate voices, generative Al has already made appearances in the 2024 U.S. presidential campaign - and its disruptive potential is only expected to grow. While much of Congress' focus to date has been on visual and audio AI-generated content in elections, large language models have potential to be similarly destructive. Bad faith actors could deploy the technology underlying chatbots to spread falsehoods online or via robocalls faster and on a much larger scale. They could spoof election official websites and produce reams of content to game platform algorithms so that false narratives trend on social media. Poynter has demonstrated how antagonists can use Al to generate whole misinformation-filled fake news websites in a matter of minutes- a special risk for elections given that millions of eligible U.S. voters live in counties with no enduring local newspaper. Advances in Al also have the potential to reduce trust in elections and authoritative sources of information. Malign foreign influence campaigns such as Russia's have long sought to muddy the information landscape so that U.S. voters find it more difficult to discern between truth and falsity. A related risk is the phenomenon of the liar's dividend, whereby politicians and other actors can deny true events by claiming that documentary evidence is AI-generated; this is an outcome playing out prominently in the current conflict in Israel and Gaza, and one that we should expect to similarly manifest in future elections. Among the actions Congress can take to mitigate the risk of deception and distrust in elections it should: 1

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