Launching The Ai Elections Initiative Aspen Digital

The “first AI elections” in the United States will be held against the backdrop of unprecedented distrust in civic institutions, the political system, and traditional media. Rapid advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) mean that voters face a likely future of compelling deepfakes, highly targeted fraudulent messages, and compounding cybersecurity threats. While much about the 2024 elections is uncertain, we know bad actors will try to manipulate public opinion and to sway voter behavior at key moments before polls open. Our country needs concerted leadership and strategic focus at the intersection of AI, elections, and social trust. Aspen Digital, a program of the Aspen Institute, is launching the AI Elections Initiative as an ambitious new effort to strengthen US election resilience in the face of generative AI. Election officials, policymakers, the private sector–including tech leaders and experts–and the news media must do their part in securing this cornerstone of American democracy.But these groups are not sufficiently communicating with each other.

Operating in silos, they won’t be as effective. That’s why we believe it’s vital to bring experts together to better understand and learn from one another. In the coming weeks, we will begin posting details about our effort to convene essential parties and publish action-oriented resources. This work will be supported by an advisory council composed of cross-sectoral experts who will help enlighten and enhance our work.A sampling of the AI Elections Initiative’s events in the first quarter includes: We know election preparedness is a whole-of-society challenge. Our approach has been informed by interviews with more than 60 experts across the tech industry, elections administration, media, civil society, and academia – all of whom identified critical risks and helped us chart...

Effective preparedness will require leaders across sectors to anticipate and mitigate threats from: All voters have a stake in election preparedness, especially those in communities historically targeted for election interference based on race. We expect bad actors will continue their long-standing practice of adapting new technologies to exploit rifts within American society in an effort to undermine confidence in democratic values by targeting voters in swing districts,... We will combat efforts to degrade our elections by empowering voters and thought leaders at this critical time.We believe technology can enable a positive future, one where AI promotes civic engagement, reinforces democratic values,... That future is more likely if cross-sector leaders work together at the outset to combat the misuse of AI in civic life. The AI Elections Initiative and the broader team at Aspen Digital are excited to support the community of leaders working to rebuild social trust and to ensure civic participation remains a touchstone of American...

Want to stay current on Aspen Digital’s work on AI elections and more? Sign up for our email list. A new effort to strengthen U.S. election resilience Get the latest on AI elections, straight from our experts. The “first AI elections” in the United States will be held against the backdrop of unprecedented distrust in civic institutions, the political system, and traditional media.

Rapid advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) mean that voters face a likely future of compelling deepfakes, highly targeted fraudulent messages, and compounding cybersecurity threats. While much about the 2024 elections is uncertain, we know bad actors will try to manipulate public opinion and to sway voter behavior at key moments before polls open. Our country needs concerted leadership and strategic focus at the intersection of AI, elections, and social trust. Aspen Digital, a program of the Aspen Institute, is launching the AI Elections Initiative as an ambitious new effort to strengthen US election resilience in the face of generative AI. Election officials, policymakers, the private sector–including tech leaders and experts–and the news media must do their part in securing this cornerstone of American democracy. But these groups are not sufficiently communicating with each other.

Operating in silos, they won’t be as effective. That’s why we believe it’s vital to bring experts together to better understand and learn from one another. In the coming weeks, we will begin posting details about our effort to convene essential parties and publish action-oriented resources. This work will be supported by an advisory council composed of cross-sectoral experts who will help enlighten and enhance our work. This week’s vote in Taiwan kickstarts a critical year in which 80+ national #elections will select leaders for roughly 4.2 billion people. These elections coincide with rapid advances in #GenerativeAI that pose new challenges for democracies worldwide.

In the US, #Election2024 comes at a time of unprecedented distrust in civic institutions and information. To address these challenges and strengthen election preparedness, our program is launching the #AIElections Initiative. Through results-oriented convenings and resources, we aim to ensure leaders across sectors are equipped to meet the challenges throughout the year, until #InaugurationDay and beyond. Input from more than 60 experts across the #tech industry, elections administration, #news media, and #CivilSociety informed the planning of this initiative, which will be supported by an advisory council that will guide and... Learn more about the AI Elections Initiative: https://lnkd.in/ecK9MWSF Want to stay current on this effort? Subscribe to our email list: https://lnkd.in/eU-E7s8N

Aspen Digital, a program of the Aspen Institute, is launching the AI Elections Initiative as an ambitious new effort to strengthen US election resilience in the face of generative AI. Vivian Schiller, V.P. & EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR & Josh Lawson, DIRECTOR, A.I. & DEMOCRACY Supporting informed civic participation and social trust in the face of fast-evolving AI tools, in an election year like no other Sign up for our email list to stay current on our work.

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Aspen Digital has announced a new initiative on addressing artificial intelligence-generated threats to elections in the U.S., citing the need for an “ambitious” collaborative approach among government and industry stakeholders amid “slow-moving policy” efforts... “Rapid advancements in artificial intelligence mean that voters face a likely future of compelling deepfakes, highly targeted fraudulent messages, and compounding cybersecurity threats. While much about the 2024 elections is uncertain, we know bad actors will try to... Inside AI Policy is a subscription-based premium news service for policy professionals who need to know about emerging federal standards and regulations for artificial intelligence. The 2024 presidential election comes during unprecedented distrust in civic institutions and information.

To strengthen election resilience, Aspen Digital has launched the AI Elections Initiative. Through results-oriented convenings and resources, they aim to ensure leaders from across sectors are equipped to meet the challenges on the horizon, until Inauguration Day and beyond.In this interview, we asked Aspen Institute VP... Public Policy Fellow Tom Latkowski to help provide some context and expertise on artificial intelligence and how it’s changing elections at home and abroad. Unprecedented is an overused word to describe surprising situations, but it really does feel like the best word to describe the current situation regarding AI and elections and the risk I think a lot... How would you describe the current landscape of elections?Vivian Schiller: These elections are being held at a time of record-low trust in civic institutions, the political system, and traditional media. Just 4% of Americans today say they have faith in our system, and voters are polarized in a way that makes it hard for us to have fact-based conversations about serious civic issues.

Worse, partisan national media is still on the rise, while local news has collapsed over the last 15 years meaning citizens have few places to turn for reliable fact-based information at the community level. Josh Lawson:Yes, and this was true before the public launch of powerful new tools like generative AI that make it cheap and easy to create believable content quickly––whether it’s images, video, text, or audio. People need to know these tools exist and that bad actors will try to use them to deceive or discourage voters. Voters will need to adapt over time, moving towards a future where deepfakes are treated like spam: around, annoying, but not alarming. It will take time to get there. AI-generated content will be more compelling than familiar efforts to sway voters or spread false information.

On the immediate horizon, we’re worried about increased ”hyperlocal voter suppression,” where bad actors create persuasive messages targeting specific audiences in order to discourage or direct voting in very specific geographies. We’re also concerned about non-English speakers receiving bespoke propaganda translated by AI into languages once out of reach for most bad actors. And we know there’s a high likelihood that propagandists will use AI to create decoy news sites (“astroturfing”) and to push large volumes of content that flood the zone during a crisis. Is there any other time in the history of the US that you know of where elections were so fraught when there was such ubiquitous concern for the health of our election?Tom Latkowski: Candidates... But today, the extreme tenor of American politics makes it easier for bad actors to exploit our divisions to discredit the democratic process we’ve built. It’s normal––even healthy––for candidates to disagree deeply over the direction of our country.

And our system is built to funnel those sincere differences into a deliberative process that ends at the ballot box. But voters need facts to make informed decisions, and that’s precisely the piece targeted by those trying to stoke conflict, whether they are foreign or domestic actors.Josh Lawson: This is an all-hands-on-deck moment for... It’s important to recognize the challenges and opportunities that AI presents as we push to build trust in our electoral process and to inspire confidence in democracy as a vital force in American life. Elections function on trust and AI has the potential to quickly undermine the public’s trust in elections and the systems we count on to hold fair elections, but also of course in politicians. What are some of the biggest causes for concerns that Aspen Digital is paying attention to? Josh Lawson: For the “big” races (like for president), we’re less concerned that deepfakes will go unchecked by journalists or campaign operatives interested in debunking faked audio or videos.

But we are quite concerned that a general atmosphere of distrust will deepen a so-called “liar’s dividend,” where top candidates claim real incidents are fake and the public is too confused to decide what... When that happens, voters may feel as though they must make decisions based on gut instinct, rather than credible reporting. That kind of post-fact world weakens accountability and poses a real risk for democratic decision-making. But even the biggest contests are often decided by small changes in turnout across key geographies, and AI-localized misinformation sent directly to voters through channels that avoid most detection (like text messages). For “small” or local races, deepfaked video or audio may go unchecked by local journalists, who have lost ground in recent years. Where that’s the case, a deepfake is more likely to dupe voters into thinking a candidate did or said something they have not, and local candidates may struggle to correct the record before an...

Other civic crises––like violent unrest or post-election disputes––are ripe targets for those planning to “flood the zone” with misleading or inflammatory AI content. The technology to spot manipulated media is still developing, and we’re unlikely to see reliable tools before the election. So it’s vital that civil society and social media redouble efforts to boost trusted community voices and factual reporting sources in a shared effort to build public resilience in the face of generative AI. Controversial uses of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in elections have made headlines globally. Whether it’s fully AI generated mayoral contenders, incarcerated politicians using AI to hold speeches from prison, or deepfakes used to falsely incriminate candidates, it’s clear that the technology is here to stay. Yet, these viral stories only show one side of the picture.

Beyond the headlines, AI is also starting to be used in the quieter parts of elections, the day-to-day work of electoral management - from information provision and data analysis to planning, administration and oversight. How Electoral Management Bodies (EMBs) choose to design, deploy and regulate these tools will shape key aspects of electoral processes far-reaching implications for trust in public institutions and democratic systems. The International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) has been seizing this critical juncture to open dialogues among EMBs on how the potential of AI to strengthen democracy can be realized, while avoiding... Over the past year, International IDEA has convened EMBs and civil society organizations (CSOs) at regional workshops across the globe to advance AI literacy and institutional capacities to jointly envision how to best approach... These workshops revealed that, in many contexts, AI is already entering electoral processes faster than institutions can fully understand or govern it. Nearly half of all participants of the workshop rated their understanding of AI as low.

However, a third of the participating organizations indicated that they are already using AI in their processes related to elections. Nevertheless, both AI skeptics and enthusiasts shared a cautious outlook during the workshops. Furthermore, EMBs have been flagging an immense dual burden, of both developing internal capacity to embrace technological innovation as well as mitigating disruptions to electoral information integrity by bad faith actors. Increasingly, private AI service providers are approaching EMBs with promised solutions to transform and automate core electoral functions from voter registration and logistics planning to voter information services and online monitoring. Yet, these offers can often be driven by commercial incentives and speedy deployment timelines, and not all products are designed with the specific legal, technical and human-rights sensitivities of elections in mind. With something as sacred as elections, it has become ever more important that the products on offer give due consideration to the election-related sensitivities for cybersecurity, data protection, and accuracy and other human rights...

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