[applause] cspan, powered by cable. Cspan is your unfiltered view of government funded by these Television Companies and including comcast. Are you thinking this is just a Community Center . No. It is way more than that. Comcast is partnering with a thousand Community Centers to create wifi enable lift so students from low income families get tools they need to be ready for anything. Comcast supports cspan as a Public Service giving you front row seat to democracy. This is neil of the abundant institute of a. I. Policy and chief technologist of the federal trade commission to Artificial Intelligence and campaign 2024. Good morning. Thanks for having me. Lets start with abundant it . Itute what is a new Mission Driven nonprofit with our explicit goal is to create the cultural and policy environment that allows emerging technologies including a. I. To germinate to bloom, and to flourish and so we think that is the major road to widespread human prosperity and were excited to tackle the big problems that that we think are in the in the United States right now. So much so they made you a director of policy specifically to that. How much does that reflect the concern they have . A. I. We think has huge potential to create widespread human abundance theres this new set of tools a. I. Has been around for a long time and you and i have talked about it in the past. But this new set of generative a. I. Creating new set of tools that i think empowers individuals to really create new and powerful types of communications with each other and so, we think it is one of the bignk tools and then as a. I. Continues to be used throughout the economy, we think it is going to create a lot of opportunities for growth, economic growth, also personal growth and were really excited about it. Before this job or at least in your resume you were at the federal trade commission called chief technologist what was that . Federal trade commission is the general consumer protection, and one of the competition agents in the United States and the chief technologist job is to bring understanding of technology to that policy space and so, ive spent a lot of time look at reports. But also cases, and investigations that the ftc was diagnose to bring that lens of Technical Expertise into the policy work that the federal trade commission was doing. Right before we go into the topic at hand Abundance Institute how was it funded and financially supported . So a wide range of foundation individual, and corporate donors were new so some of that is still being figured out. But you know we Just Launched in april but thats sort of the space that we live in. If i asked does a. I. Money come from the community . Im not 100 sure on what companies but i think that a lot of a. I. Communities certain parts of it would be interested in what were doing. Yes. So when it comes to topic of the election, your institute put it out as part first of a series of reports forthcoming about the election whats the concern overall at least the thing youre concerned about with these reports . So, you know almost as soon as chapter chat gpt launched and theres concern about the 2024 election theres a lot of speculation and wasnt clear what was happening. There were some reports of some incidents that came about and what weer decided to do was lauh a observatory a tracker that would track all media mentions in u. S. Outlets of a. I. , a. I. Use in election and so weve been running that using the keyword tool that tracks all of that. And we launched it in january 21st about a year before inauguration, and weve released our first periodic report last week. Yeah, 180 days out from the election and so you know, out of the 7500 articles that are tracker identified, we spotted three incidents of uses of a. I. In elections. U and some of those are very interesting we can talk about what specific instances are. And so the goal here is to track all of the way up and through the election so after the election we have a very good ground truth, a database that says like what actually happened . Because a lot of speculation is that a. I. Will fundamentally transform our elections weve seen a lot of concern from academia from politicians, saying things like, this is our last human election. And or that we need to get this under control or, you know, we wont have a democracy anymore. And so we wanted to like really get a good database of information that says, what kind of impact is this actually having right now . Before we look at examples to what degree do you think a. I. Has ability to undermine or sway election . I think theres a couple of different vectors that can happen c one of them i think people were worried about that it would be used to hack election machines. Itha turns out that that vector from all of the people ive talked to is very unlikely. The election system, the mechanics of the election system in the u. S. Are very robust and districted so it is a kind of a tax surface thats difficult to get around and a. I. Doesnt change that much. The other way it might change things would be around disinformation or misinformation. Now, the question is how much does it increase misinformation or disinformation and election . I dont think that any watcher of news or observer of u. S. Politics is unaware that theres actually a lot of misinformation in Election Communications already. And so people are generally quite skeptical of information and so, i think on the margins it will increase the amount of speech because these tools do make it easier for people individuals, including individuals to create sophisticated con tngt but theres no reason to think that speechte will like be out of the balance more lies than truth. Ii think a. I. Has a lot of potential to actually help people who have, you know, who are marginalized communities who want to speak to politicians or politicians want to speak to them, to connect them through things like automated translation so i think theres ways ways that a. I. Could help increase robustness of democracy theres ways that it could threaten it so were doing this research to at the end of the election cycle well have a really good set of data that says what was the Practical Impact . This is neil joining us Abundance Institute and questions about Artificial Intelligence and upcoming election call the line. If you live in the eastern and central time zones, it is mo2022488003. From the first 2 part of the report one thing that came bag the information you called together was a robo call that took place before the New Hampshire primary. This call went from 25,000 people in New Hampshire. It is not quite clear how they were targeted democrats or reallies or some mix. And this robo call was the voice of joe biden saying, if you vote in todays primary the republicans will win or Something Like that. And so, the the implication was that it was trying to suppress voter turnout. And that robo call went out, you know, i think hundreds of thousands of people voted in that election. And the secretary of state hasnd since of New Hampshire has since investigated this andth said the was no evidence that it suppressed votes, in fact, the republican primary that year which iss on the same day had a record ub record turnout that democrat one had a very average turnout for a year in which the democratic candidate is running unopposed so it doesnt appear to have a suppressivesu effect and created by a democratic strategist. He says to promote idea and the concern around a. I. , and so so it is interesting case. We have that for the folks heres that ad that took place before the New Hampshire primary. D e new jersey president ial preference primary republicans have been trying to push nonpartisan and democratic volters to participate in their primary. What a bunch of malarkey. We know value of voting democracy when our vote counts and save your vote for the november election well need your help in electing democrats up and down the ticket. Voting this tuesday only enables the republicans in their quest to elect donald trump again. Your vote makes a difference in november not this tuesday. If you would like to be removed from future calls, please press number 2 right now. It can be used to lie. There are some concerns about that. And so i think the call itself, so we found out did not have a huge impact. But in the something borders should be aware of if theyre getting unusual calls that people are selling a certain person they should Pay Attention and double check. Especially their local Election Officials about what is going on. Courses take a call from mika from North Carolina. Your aunt but the Abundance Institute formally of the federal trade commission. Us today to talk about the 2024 election. Whenen it comes to election matters. Mika, go ahead. Are you there . Okay i think im a little transmission probably cannot hear. We will try that call. Mika, if you are on keep going or we will get back to in a Second Period when it comes to this idea that you found about about the video being one part of those concerns of information of the things that you find that came back in the search you did . Two of the other incidents otwere an incident where there d been a deep fake created of taylor swift of her holding up a sign that says trump a one, biden lost their two different insensible is a video, one was a picture. It turns out it appears especially the photo one could have been down with traditional editing tools and so its not clear at all that was eight i create a problem. That was on the incidents i got reported as potentially ai problem. The other when we found in the period that we looked at their work Trump Supporters who spread ai generated photos of donald trump embracing africanamerican women and showing support from the africanamerican community. This was a deep fake. It was created by ai. Theres a call in show guy in florida who admitted he use the tools to make that. Those of the two other ones within the window. We did also talk about the others that happened before the tracker. That was used in a desantis add of some fake pictures of trump and fauci together. That had happened before that did using ai tool that was in a campaign ad. That is the only would we have seen so far of the use of Ai Technology in such an explicit way in a campaign ad. A highlight in the story during the ad it was the pictures of where the president presentappears to be hugging dri that has been created. I think that is right. Slipped in and amongst other pictures as well that were real. You would think this to be the certain thing that would be very hard to notice. Because his or highprofile candidates, obviously theres a lot of scrutiny on the ads that they put out. It was identified a relatively quickly this had fake images in it. E erthe Desantis Campaign was ry certain columns branch of the Desantis Campaign. Obviously the Desantis Campaign is no longterm not shorts tragedy benefited themth as the way they hoped it would. Again another incident in the tracker of 7005 at meter reports we saw this as one of the three or four the keeps popping up a box here is the photo of the bbc publishing that former president with africanamerican supporters. Esteemed as false the bbc picking that up as well for this one of the conversations we will have when it comes to 2024 matters in Artificial Intelligence. Illustrate mika again and North Carolina, good morning. Caller im currently set it studying Artificial Intelligence programs in college their major issues i see with it that could affect our political landscape. Mostly it is a fact that our political leaders and uneducated on ai. They have no idea how it operates how its created the training that goes into it. The data sets that are used for. And so on. Has your institute looked into trying to create Training Programs for our Congress Said that they understand the concept of this technology a little better when they are making policies . I do not want another ai winter to happen as soon as i get my degree. I do not want that for you either. As a call back is interesting. Itser come to several periods theres tons of excitement and it sort of dies off when it gets integrated into Technology Nobody thanks of it as ai anymore. They think of it as computers. I think your point is really important. Getting a regulation right in in the space is critical. You dont need to know everything about technology but you need to know i like to call the policy relevant characteristics ofle ai. My institute has great educational material. We largely use them at the state level for state legislators were a ton of the legislative action is happening. Congress moves slower. It has a lot of competing other interests. And so we are making those inroads in congress as well. Theyre also been talk to a lot from people from industry and for advocacy groups that are all trying to Bring Congress up to speed on this stuff. Each with their own politicalan angle. We do think it is important to principal educational materials to help make the right decisions about how to regulate in the space absolutely. Stu and eric is in antioch, california hello. Caller good morning everyone. I was just wondering how the election is going to come down to five or six states and out of those states i wondering did ai possibly be telling what individuals you have to concentrate on ands be able to tell by algorithms how to influence those individuals to make them vote the way you want . It is a great question. Political strategists have for decades at this point been selling tools that can help identify its really hard to change peoples mind. Trying to figure out how to do that, ai does not have a particular advantage on that. Most of the techniques we use in targeted political advertising techniques that use computers and they use algorithms there are now at the newtonut generative ai does not create a new set of tools for identifying people who are particularly persuadable. I dont want that is a big difference customized messages the generative ai to customize messages may beat to the issues the politician and the targeted voter intersects they most care about. Maybe there are tools to help politicians reach their candidates they would not otherwise connect with. Under this new wave of generative ai. How much background and technology do you have to used to use ai sophisticated like what we sell with biden. And how much trading do you really need . Not a ton. It turns out the person who carried the biden a rowboat call was a newll orleans street performer visit democrat strategist had hired to do this. I dont think he had any formal technology training. A lot of these tools are point and click. They are really powerful and interesting. I encourage the listeners to try out some of these tools and become familiar with what they can do and what they cant do. That familiarity with the tools will help people understand theirth limits. And also Pay Attention to what theyin are hearing and may be being eight bring a skeptical eye to it. With some educated background progress you see a future with some type of transparency is needed when you look for an ad and see if ai is being used in the ad that needs be identified in some way . Are a lot of bills looking at that. In the political space there are some bills actively looking at that. We have disclosures in political ads for various things. The challenge is, as i mentioned before once i ate works we dont call it ai anymore. Your cell phone camera has ai algorithms built into it. If you take a video with that does that count as an ai created ad . There is really difficult definitional questions about what would count as ai. The safe advice would be too safe i am the lawyer for a candidate i would say put this disclosure and because we are not really sure if you have that disclosure and every addict doesnt add anything. It does not add any information. I think there are real tradeoffs it theres important messages the kid has moment to get out to the public. I think there are real tradeoffs and having forced foe disclosure in thatt space. Its certainly Something Congress is lookingin out. Neil chilson of the Abundance Institute letter from dave in south carolina, hello dave. Good morning pedro. Listen, why is a basic deceit thats being practiced byha ai purveyors, why is this deceit not prosecutable . This type of interference in our election and the control of our government is unheard of. I dont understand why those that have this are allowed to practice what they do thank you. Its really great point. Especially in the commercial context is already criminal prep youre lying about your products or prices or anything it is criminal. In the political state, political speeches highly protected by the First Amendment. Miss truth and its often quite subjective. However, there are laws of theof westate and federal level againt lying about such things as when the election is or where your polling places. Does not matter what tool you used to do that whether use pen and paper sophisticatedte ai viewer lying people to suppress voters and suppress the turnout by lying about the process of the election, that is a crime and it can be prosecuted. We have a viewer off of x asking this question. It see i china or russia decides to fully pull the trigger on ai the rest of the western world but have not but have to do the same. You agree with that . Im not sure if this is in the context of the election . Their ability to influ