Elon Poll Director Jason Husser and Lee Rainie, director of the Imagining the Digital Future Center, talked with FOX8's Bob Buckley about how expanding AI capabilities could influence the political sphere.
Rapid advances in artificial intelligence are creating a new technological revolution with widespread impacts, including within the political realm.
Lee Rainie, director of the Imagining the Digital Future Center, and Jason Husser, director of the Elon University Poll and professor of political science, recent sat down with FOX8’s Bob Buckley to see what those political impacts might be and what the public thinks about how AI could impact elections. A survey this spring by the Elon Poll and the Imagining the Digital Future Center found that close to 80 percent of the public expects AI will influence the outcome of the presidential election in some way.
“Fake information is nothing new,” Husser told Buckley. “It’s older than the United States itself. It’s older than democracy itself. Think back to Andrew Jackson running against John Quincy Adams. Rumors were passed by the Adams camp that Jackson’s wife had been married to another man and wasn’t a legitimate marriage. She ends up having a heart attack that Andrew Jackson blames on this false information that he holds against the enemies for the rest of his days.”
Rainie advised that there are ways for informed voters to mitigate the impact from AI fakery and to ensure that the information they are consuming is valid. ““I think there are ways in which we have learned … that there are trustworthy processes to go through. It doesn’t mean that people won’t make mistakes or institutions won’t have problems, but part of the issue here … is fessing up when you’ve made a mistake or a problem, and lots of institutions don’t do that now in the in the public imagination,” Rainie said. “The tried-and-true things work really well for people … making sure you know where stuff is coming from, making sure to get second opinions if you’re not sure where it comes from, making sure to rely on trustworthy sources like journalists like librarians like major institutions that have experts in them.”
Watch the entire segment to learn more.