Trade commission joining us now to talk about Artificial Intelligence and campaign 2024. Good morning. Lets start with the Abundance Institute. Guest the Abundance Institute is a new Mission Driven nonprofit to create the cultural en let us start with the abundant institute this is our explicit goal to a boat policy environment that allows emerging technologies, including a. I. To germinate, bloom and to flourish. We think that is the major road to widespread human prosperity and we are excited to tackle the big problems that we think are in the United States right now. So much so the director of policy specifically to that part that reflects the concern they have a. I. Has huge potential to create widespread human abundance. There is this new set of tools. A. I. Has been around for a long time. You and i have talked about it in the past. This new set of generative a. I. Creates a whole new set of tools that i think empowers individuals to really create new and powerful types of communications with each other. We think it is one of the big tools. As a. I. Continues to be used throughout the economy, we think it will create a lot of opportunities for growth, Economic Growth but also personal growth and we are excited about it. Before this job or at least you are that you at the federal commission with a position called chief technologist. What was that and how does it inform you do now . The federal trade commission is the general Consumer Protection and what of the competition agencies in the United States but the chief technologist job is to bring understanding of technology to that policy space. I spent a lot of time looking at reports but also cases and investigations that the ftc was doing to bring that lens of Technical Expertise into the policy work that the federal trade commission was doing. Before we go into the topic at hand, how is it funded and financially supported . The abundant institute has a wide range of foundation and corporate donors. We are very new. Some of that is still being figured out. We Just Launched in april. That is the space that we live in. Does that come from the community . I am not sure of all the details with what companies. A lot of the a. I. Communities would be very interested in what we are doing. When it comes to the topic of the elections, your institute put out a series of reports forthcoming about the election. What is the concern over all or at least the things you are concerned about these reports . Almost as soon as chatgpt launch in october 2022, there was discussion about this technology might be used to impact elections. There is a lot of concern about the 2024 election it was not clear what was happening. There were some reports of some incidents that came about. We decided to launch an observatory, a tracker that would track all media mentions in the u. S. Outlets of a. I. Use in elections. We have been running about using keyword tool that tracks all of that. We launched in january about a year before the inauguration. And we have released our first periodic report last week. 180 days out from the election. Out of the 7000 articles that are tractor identified, we spotted three incidents of uses of a. I. In elections. Some of those are interesting and we can talk more about what those instances are. The goal is to track all the way up and through the election so that after the election, you can have a very good ground truth. A database that says, what actually happened . A lot of the speculation is that a. I. Will transform our elections. We have seen a lot of concerns from academia and politicians saying things like this is our last human election or that we need to get this under control or we wont have a democracy anymore. We want to get a good database that says, what kind of impact is this actually having right now . What do you think a. I. Has the ability to undermine or sway an election . There is a couple different vectors. What of them that i think people were early on very worried about was the used to hack election machines. It turns out that that vector from all the people that i have talked to is very unlikely. The election system the mechanics in the election system are very robust and distributed for it is a kind of tax service that is difficult to get around the a. I. Does not change that much. The other way might change things would be around this information or misinformation. How much does it increase misinformation or disinformation in elections . I do not think that any watcher of news or observer of u. S. Politics is unaware that there is a lot of misinformation and election communication already. People are generally quite skeptical of information. On the margins, it will increase the amount of speech because these tools do make it easier for people, individuals, including individuals to create content. There is no reason to think the speech will be out of balance, more lies and truths. A. I. Has a lot of potential to help people who have, who are marginalized communities who want to speak to politicians or politicians want to speak to them to connect them. Things like automated translation. There is a lot of ways a. I. Can help increase the robustness of democracy. There is ways to prevent. That is why we do this research but at the end of the election cycle, we will have a good set of data that says, what was the Practical Impact human this is neil chilson of the abundant institute but if you want to ask him questions concerning Artificial Intelligence and the upcoming election, youve got line 202 7488000 if you live in central time zone. You can also text us your thoughts at 2027488003 and other things that came back from the report, the information you call together was a rebel call that took place before the New Hampshire primary. Set this call up for us. This was a call that went up between 5020 5000 people in new hampshir. It is not clear how they were target if it was democrats, republicans or some mix. This rebel call was the boys of joe biden saying, if you vote in todays primary, the republicans win or Something Like that. The implication it was trying to suppress voter turnout that call went out. Hundred of thousands with boded in that election but they have investigated this and said there was no evidence that it suppress vote. Republican primary that year, on the same day, had record turnout. The democrat one had a very average turnout for a year in which the democratic candidate is running unopposed. It does not appear to have had a suppressive effects. In a weird twist, it was actually created by a democratic strategist. He says to promote the idea and the concern around a. I. It is an interesting case. Here is the ad that took place just before the New Hampshire primary. This is New Hampshire president ial preference primary but republicans have been trying to push nonpartisan and democratic voters to produce a pay in their primary what a bunch of malarkey we know the value of voting democratic when our vote count. It is important that you save your vote for the november election. We will 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 ball makes a difference in november, not this tuesday. If you would like to be removed from future calls, please press two now. That is the culprit as far as a call itself what did you think about the ability to reproduce the president about waking this technology is amazing. I think it is pretty incredible that we can use these techniques to take a small sample of somebodys voice and replicate it. It can be used to lie, right . There are concerns around that. I think the call itself, as we found out did not have a huge impact but it is something that voters should be aware of if they are getting unusual calls from people that sound like a certain person but they should Pay Attention and double check, especially with your local Election Officials about what is going on. Let us take a call from mika. You are on with neil chilson of the abundant institute. He is of the federal trade commission for joining us today to talk about the 2024 election and when it comes to election matters. Mika, go ahead. Mika, are you there . I think were having a little transmission problem but we will try that call. Mika, if you are on, keep going. We will get back to in a second. Mr. Chilson, when you found out about the video being part of the concerns of information, what other things did you find that came back from the search that you did . Two of the other incidents were an incident where there had been a deep fake created of taylor swift that had her holding up a sign that said trump won, by the loss. One was a video was a picture. It turns out it appears that especially the photo one could have been done with traditional editing tools. It is not clear at all that that was an a. I. Created problem that was one of the incident that got reported as potentially an a. I. Problem. The other one that we found in the period that we looked at was there was Trump Supporters who spread these a. I. Generated photos of donald trump embracing African American women and showing support from the African American community. This one was a deep fake that was created by a. I. There was a call in sugar in florida who admitted he had used the tools to make that those were the other ones with in the window. We did talk about another significant one that happened before we started the tracker. That was the use in a desantis add of some fakes pictures of trump and foutch eat together. That did use an a. I. To and that was in the campaign ad. That was so far the only use of technology in and such and especially way. You have in the story from npr saying that during the at it was pictures of where the president appears to be coming hugging dr. Fuaci. Is up to the months other pictures that were real. Exactly. You would think this would be the sort of thing that would be hard to notice. Because these are highprofile candidates, obviously, there is a lot of scrutiny on the ads they put out. It was identified relatively quickly that this had fake images in it. The Desantis Campaign was run by a comms branch of the Desantis Campaign. Obviously, the Desantis Campaign is no more. Im not sure the strategy benefited them the way that they hoped it would. It is another incident in the tracker of the 7500 media reports we saw, this is one of the three or four that pops up this is the bbc publishing the photo of the former present with African American supporters. This was deemed as false but the bbc picking that up as well. That is one of the conversations we will have when it comes to 2020 for an Artificial Intelligence but let us try mika again in north carolina. Good morning. Hi. I am currently studying Artificial Intelligence in college. There is major issues that i see that could of fact our political landscape. Mostly, it is facts that are political beaters and uneducated on a. I. They have no idea how it operates or created. The data sets that are used for it. Has your instant suit looked into trying to create Training Programs for our congress so that they understand the concept of this Technology Better when theyre making policies . I dont want another a. I. Winter to happen as soon as i get my degree. I dont want that for you either. The call back to a. I. Winter is interesting but a. I. Has gone through several periods where there is tons of excitement and it dies often people think it is integrated to Technology Anyone thinks of it as a. I. Anywhere. They think of it as computers. Your point is really important. Getting regulation right in this space is critical. To do that, you do not need to know everything about the technology but you need to know what i like to call the policy relevant characteristics of a. I. My institute has created some educational materials. We have largely use them at the state level for state legislators. A time of the action is happening. Congress moves slower and has a lot of competing our interest. We are making bows and roads with congress as well. They are also being talked about by people from industry and from adequacy groups advocacy groups. Each with their own political angle. We do think it is important to get principled educational materials that will help make the right decisions around how to regulate in the space. Eric is in california, antioch, california, hello. Good morning, everyone. I was just wondering how it looks like the election will come down to five or six dates. Could a i possibly tell you what individuals you have to concentrate on and be able to tell by algorithms how to influence those individuals as 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 what our potential voters in a space that are persuadable. It turns out it is actually really hard to change peoples minds. Trying to figure out out how to that a. I. Does not have an advantage on that. Most of the techniques we use in targeted political advertising are statistical techniques that you could call them Artificial Intelligence because they use computers and algorithms but they are not what this new generative a. I. Does not create a new set of tools for identifying people who are particularly persuadable. I do not know that is a big difference. A. I. Does create a way to customize messages, the generative a. I. To customize messages maybe to the issues that the politician and the targeted voter the intersection of what they most care about. Maybe there are tools that help politicians or candidates reach people who they would not otherwise be able to connect with. I dont think the targeting tools have changed that much under this new wave of a generative a. I. How much background and technology do you have to have to use a i like the one we saw was biting . , trained unita . Mount katahdin. The person that created the biden robel call was actually a new orleans street performer that this democratic strategist had hired to do this. I dont think he had any formal technology training. A lot of these tools are point andclick. They are 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 can do. That familiarity with the tools will help people understand their limits and Pay Attention to what they are hearing and bring a skeptical eye to it. With some educated background. Do you see a future where some type of transparency is needed when you look for an ad that needs to be divided someway . There is a lot of bills that are looking at that were in the political space, there are some bills that are actively looking at that but we have disclosures and political ads are ready for various things. As i mentioned before, once a. I. Works, we dont call it a. I. Anymore. Your cell phones camera has a algorithms dealt into it. If you take a video, does that count as an a. I. Created ad . There is some definitional questions about what would count as a. I. The safe advice would be to say, if i am the lawyer for a candidate i would say, put this disclosure in because were not really sure. If you have that disclosure on every ad, it does not add anything. It does not add any information for the voter. There are tradeoffs at the crowd that some of the important messages candidates might want to get out to the public. I think there are tradeoffs in having force disclosures in that space. It is certainly something that congress is looking at. Neil chilson, from this conversation. Let us hear from dave in south carolina. Hello, dave good morning, pedro. Why is the basic deceit that is being practiced by a. I. Purveyors, why is this deceit not prosecutable . This type of interference in our election and control of our government is unheard of. I do not understand why those that have this are allowed to practice what they do. It is a really great point, dave. Lying in a commercial context is already credible. If you lie about products or prices, it is criminal. In the political space, political speech is highly protected by the First Amendment. Myths truce it is also quite subjective. However, there are laws both at the state and federal level against mining about such things as when the election is if you use pen and paper or if you use some sophisticated a. I. , if you live to people in order to suppress voters and the turnout by lightning about the process of the election, that is a crime. It can be prosecuted. We have of your off of x asking this question but it seems that if china or russia decided to pull the trigger on a i west of the western world have no choice but to do the same. Do you agree with that . Im not sure this is in the context of elections. I would guess it would be the ability to influence elections. In the elections, again, it is hard to know exactly how a. I. Would be used. In many cases the goals of foreign adversaries and elections is not to determine a specific outcome. Often it is to undermine the American Trust in the electoral process. For that, you really dont need sophisticated techniques. The sketcher the technique look, the better they trigger somebodys alarm and say, it looks like something is going on sketchy in the selection. I do think this new generative a. I. Does not really amped up the ability to undermine our confidence in elections. If that is the goal of many of these thirdparty actors, i think a. I. Does not change that too much. Is there a way to measure how morris vizcaino generative a. I. Is now versus when it first made the scene . These tests, lots of Different Things many different capabilities. Obviously there is different for video or audio or text which are the three main a