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Published December 2024 by Harvard's Ash Center; useful empirical grounding for discussions about near-term AI misuse risks and the gap between predicted and actual harms in democratic contexts.
Metadata
Importance: 42/100news articlecommentary
Summary
A Harvard Ash Center analysis by Bruce Schneier and Nathan Sanders reviewing AI's actual role in 2024's historic global election cycle, finding that feared deepfake and misinformation catastrophes did not materialize while beneficial uses like language translation and voter outreach emerged. The piece provides a balanced post-mortem on AI's electoral impact across 72 countries.
Key Points
- •2024 was the largest election year in history with 3.7 billion eligible voters across 72 countries, making it the first true 'AI election' cycle.
- •Fears of AI-driven misinformation and deepfakes causing democratic collapse largely did not materialize as predicted.
- •AI found constructive uses in campaigns, notably language translation for voter outreach, though these uses often happened secretly inside campaigns.
- •Public perception was strongly negative: 8x more Americans expected AI to be used for bad vs. good electoral purposes per Pew Research.
- •The piece cautions that while 2024 was manageable, the risks of AI in elections remain real and require responsible governance going forward.
Cited by 2 pages
| Page | Type | Quality |
|---|---|---|
| Persuasion and Social Manipulation | Capability | 63.0 |
| AI-Era Epistemic Security | Approach | 63.0 |
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The apocalypse that wasn’t: AI was everywhere in 2024’s elections, but deepfakes and misinformation were only part of the picture – Ash Center
Commentary Dec 4, 2024
The apocalypse that wasn’t: AI was everywhere in 2024’s elections, but deepfakes and misinformation were only part of the picture
As 2024 draws to a close, it’s instructive to take stock of how democracy did.
By:
Bruce Schneier
Nathan Sanders
Issues
Democracy and AI
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AI played many roles in 2024’s elections. AP Photo/Paul Vernon
It’s been the biggest year for elections in human history: 2024 is a “ super-cycle ” year in which 3.7 billion eligible voters in 72 countries had the chance to go the polls. These are also the first AI elections , where many feared that deepfakes and artificial intelligence-generated misinformation would overwhelm the democratic processes. As 2024 draws to a close, it’s instructive to take stock of how democracy did.
In a Pew survey of Americans from earlier this fall, nearly eight times as many respondents expected AI to be used for mostly bad purposes in the 2024 election as those who thought it would be used mostly for good. There are real concerns and risks in using AI in electoral politics, but it definitely has not been all bad.
The dreaded “ death of truth ” has not materialized – at least, not due to AI. And candidates are eagerly adopting AI in many places where it can be constructive, if used responsibly. But because this all happens inside a campaign, and largely in secret, the public often doesn’t see all the details.
Connecting with voters
One of the most impressive and beneficial uses of AI is language translation, and campaigns have started using it widely . Local governments in Japan and California and prominent politicians, including India Prime Minister Narenda Modi and New York City Mayor Eric Adams , used AI to translate meetings and speeches to their diverse constituents.
Even when politicians themselves aren’t speaking through AI, their constituents might be using it to listen to them. Google rolled out free translation services for an additional 110 languages this summer, available to billions of people in real time through their smartphones.
Other candidates used AI’s conversational capabilities to connect with voters. U.S. politicians Asa Hutchinson , Dean Phillips and Francis Suarez deployed chatbots of themselves in their presidential primary campaigns. The fringe candidate Jason Palmer beat Joe Biden in the American Samoan primary, at least partly thanks to using AI-generated emails, texts, audio and video. Pakistan’s former prime minister, Imran Khan , used an AI clone of his voice to deliver speec
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