As concerns mount about the influential role of information pollution, disseminated through the vast platforms of US and Chinese corporations, in shaping these elections, a new shadow looms: how artificial intelligence – more specifically, generative AI such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT – has increasingly moved into the mainstream of technology.
Altman calls generative AI a major threat to democracy, warning of an avalanche of disinformation that blurs the lines between fact and fiction.
In Kenya, for example, I spent months documenting how Twitter’s trending algorithm was easily manipulated by a thriving disinformation-for-hire industry to spread propaganda and quash dissent through the platform.
My research in Kenya also found that TikTok’s “For You” algorithm was feeding hundreds of hateful and inflammatory propaganda videos to millions of Kenyans ahead of its 2022 elections.
Social media platforms such as Facebook and TikTok have accelerated the spread of propaganda through microtargeting and by evading election silence windows, or blackout periods, making distribution remarkably simple.
In its “please regulate us” campaign, the tech industry has conveniently ignored the fact that, in its efforts to build these AI systems, it has nearly destroyed people’s lives along the way.