Ai In Politics Markkula Center For Applied Ethics

Bonisiwe Shabane

-Dec 6, 2025, 9:20 AM

ai in politics markkula center for applied ethics

📣 The Markkula Center for Applied Ethics released, “Ensuring AI is a Force for Good: 2024–25 Annual Report!” This report showcases the Center’s work strengthening ethical decision-making on topics relating to artificial intelligence, ensuring... Highlights include: ✴️ Overview from Executive Director, Don Heider. 💡 Events and research supported through partnership with Next 10, including a day long conference on AI and the Environment. 🎓Projects from 50+ student fellows and interns across the Center’s Environmental, Hackworth, Business, Government, and Health Care Ethics programs. 🗳️Ann Gregg Skeet, senior director of leadership ethics, and John Pelissero, former director of government ethics, co-authored an update–including a chapter devoted to AI’s impact on democracy–to the book, “Voting for Ethics: A Guide... Voters.” 🌐More than 1.4 Million website visitors including global reach with 48% of visitors from outside the United States.

The Center extends gratitude to our donors, advisors, and partners whose support makes this work possible. #Markkula #Ethics #AnnualReport #SantaClaraUniversity #CommunityEthics #EthicsInAction 🔗 Join us in looking back at the 2024-25 academic year: scu.edu/ethics/annual-report/ There is great public concern about the potential use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) for political persuasion and the resulting impacts on elections and democracy1,2,3,4,5,6. We inform these concerns using pre-registered experiments to assess the ability of large language models to influence voter attitudes. In the context of the 2024 US presidential election, the 2025 Canadian federal election and the 2025 Polish presidential election, we assigned participants randomly to have a conversation with an AI model that advocated...

We observed significant treatment effects on candidate preference that are larger than typically observed from traditional video advertisements7,8,9. We also document large persuasion effects on Massachusetts residents’ support for a ballot measure legalizing psychedelics. Examining the persuasion strategies9 used by the models indicates that they persuade with relevant facts and evidence, rather than using sophisticated psychological persuasion techniques. Not all facts and evidence presented, however, were accurate; across all three countries, the AI models advocating for candidates on the political right made more inaccurate claims. Together, these findings highlight the potential for AI to influence voters and the important role it might play in future elections. This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access Nature and 54 other Nature Portfolio journals Get Nature+, our best-value online-access subscription Receive 51 print issues and online access Last month I had an opportunity to interview Ms. Irina Raicu, Director of Internet Ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics. Ms.

Raicu’s work spans a wide array of areas, including online privacy, social media’s impact on society, the digital divide, encryption ethics and AI’s environmental impact and other broader ethical challenges. She was… Last month I had an opportunity to interview Ms. Irina Raicu, Director of Internet Ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics. Ms. Raicu’s work spans a wide array of areas, including online privacy, social media’s impact on society, the digital divide, encryption ethics and AI’s environmental impact and other broader ethical challenges.

She was a member of the Partnership on AI’s first working group on Fair, Transparent, and Accountable AI, and she served as a member of the city of San Jose’s first privacy advisory task... In our conversation, Ms. Raicu shared her insights on a range of pressing issues at the intersection of technology, ethics, and society. Here are key points from that discussion. Ms. Raicu emphasized the often-overlooked environmental consequences of AI.

She highlighted a day-long conference co-sponsored by the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics and Next 10 on November 1st 2024 – AI and the Environment: Sustaining the Common Good. The conference explored areas such as AI’s environmental footprint, water consumption, Greening AI efforts, business implications, and regulations and laws for sustainable AI development. She highlighted the need to increase awareness of this issue by disseminating information through various channels. The recordings of the conference are on the event page. Ms. Raicu highlighted the need to balance innovative technologies and environmental impact.

She suggested considering technical solutions like using smaller AI models designed for specific purposes. Users should be mindful of personal AI usage and limit energy-intensive applications like image generation. She also noted the importance of factoring in environmental costs in business decisions. Deepfakes are steering political narratives and voter perception by merging satire and disinformation, which misleads voters and distorts democratic discourse. "The irresponsible use of AI by people in government leadership positions suggests that we are at a moment that transcends politics. What is society’s moral code?

If politicians, news outlets, and civic organizations adopted a “civic covenant for the AI age,” much like current journalistic standards, could we create a healthier public square?" Davina Hurt, director, government ethics and Ann Skeet, senior director, leadership ethics, published by Salon. Artificial Intelligence and Ethics: Sixteen Challenges and Opportunities This page from the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University explores sixteen challenges and opportunities at the intersection of artificial intelligence and ethics. Great Promise but Potential for Peril The linked Harvard Gazette article from 2020 discusses the mounting ethical concerns surrounding the increasing involvement of AI in decision-making processes. © 2025 Moffett Library, Midwestern State University The Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University is a partner in the NHNAI Project, which focuses on understanding how technology generally, and artificial intelligence specifically, impacts humanity.

The Markkula Center has recently released its “Ethics in the Age of Disruptive Technologies: An Operational Roadmap” through its Institute for Technology, Ethics, and Culture. This roadmap helps organizations operationalize efforts to make better decisions based on the relationships between technology and humans and the environment. Please click on this link for the Roadmap and supporting materials. AI is eminently capable of political persuasion and could automate it at a mass scale. We are not prepared. In January 2024, the phone rang in homes all around New Hampshire.

On the other end was Joe Biden’s voice, urging Democrats to “save your vote” by skipping the primary. It sounded authentic, but it wasn’t. The call was a fake, generated by artificial intelligence. Today, the technology behind that hoax looks quaint. Tools like OpenAI’s Sora now make it possible to create convincing synthetic videos with astonishing ease. AI can be used to fabricate messages from politicians and celebrities—even entire news clips—in minutes.

The fear that elections could be overwhelmed by realistic fake media has gone mainstream—and for good reason. But that’s only half the story. The deeper threat isn’t that AI can just imitate people—it’s that it can actively persuade people. And new research published this week shows just how powerful that persuasion can be. In two large peer-reviewed studies, AI chatbots shifted voters’ views by a substantial margin, far more than traditional political advertising tends to do. In the coming years, we will see the rise of AI that can personalize arguments, test what works, and quietly reshape political views at scale.

Ai In Politics Markkula Center For Applied Ethics

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