Journalists are more important than ever in the 2024 election cycle

Fact, fiction, and AI

With a background in journalism and digital media, my understanding of how technology clouds our perception of the world has never been more critical. A recent piece in the NYT by Zvi Mowshowitz (paywalled) goes into depth about how AI chatbots mirror societal divisions like “left” and “right wing.”

This highlights how important robust editorial and journalistic judgement is as we enter an era where AI is starting to influence almost everything in our world. We need journalists to help us decipher whether what AI is producing us is true.

As we approach pivotal 2024 elections, we’re starting to uncover the unfolding drama of AI in the political arena. With its prowess in generating persuasive content, AI is poised to become a force in shaping public opinion. The advent of hyper-targeted political ads and sophisticated deepfakes makes it difficult to distinguish between real and fake content.

Adding to the complexity, last week’s Stanford AI Index Report 2024 predicts the potential misuse of AI in video surveillance of voters. This could undermine the integrity of elections. The report assesses various AI political use cases, their technological readiness, risk levels, and visibility to users. For instance, employing AI for voter authentication is already highly feasible and carries significant risks.

In a 2023 PLOS ONE study referenced in the Stanford report, researchers presented genuine and deepfake audio to 529 people, who correctly identified the deepfakes only 73% of the time. This underscores the urgent need for heightened awareness and improved detection capabilities as speech synthesis algorithms become more realistic and harder to detect.

At a time when media and journalism budgets are dwindling, we need journalists now more than ever. By championing human insight and control over content, we must work to shape AI towards a future that helps, rather than undermines, our understanding of the world. This calls for an active role from journalists to educate the public, advocate for transparency in AI developments, and safeguard the democratic process as technology evolves.