Tuesday, June 18, 2024

Most of this will not rise to the level where journalists would find it news-worthy.

https://apnews.com/article/artificial-intelligence-local-races-deepfakes-2024-1d5080a5c916d5ff10eadd1d81f43dfd

AI experimentation is high risk, high reward for low-profile political campaigns

Adrian Perkins was running for reelection as the mayor of Shreveport, Louisiana, when he was surprised by a harsh campaign hit piece.

The satirical TV commercial, paid for by a rival political action committee, used artificial intelligence to depict Perkins as a high school student who had been called into the principal’s office. Instead of giving a tongue-lashing for cheating on a test or getting in a fight, the principal blasted Perkins for failing to keep communities safe and create jobs.

The video superimposed Perkins’ face onto the body of an actor playing him. Although the ad was labeled as being created with “deep learning computer technology,” Perkins said it was powerful and resonated with voters. He didn’t have enough money or campaign staff to counteract it, and thinks it was one of many reasons he lost the 2022 race. A representative for the group behind the ad did not respond to a request for comment.

One hundred percent the deepfake ad affected our campaign because we were a down-ballot, less resourced place,” said Perkins, a Democrat. “You had to pick and choose where you put your efforts.”



(Related) Do we need an Article 50?

https://www.bespacific.com/a-detailed-analysis-of-article-50-of-the-eus-artificial-intelligence-act/

A Detailed Analysis of Article 50 of the EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act

Gils, Thomas, A Detailed Analysis of Article 50 of the EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act (June 14, 2024). Chapter to appear in an upcoming commentary on the EU AI Act (Q3-4 2024)., https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4865427 – “Article 50 of the EU’s AI Act contains transparency requirements for (i) interactive AI systems; (ii) synthetic content (including synthetic audio, image, video or text content); (iii) emotion recognition systems and biometric categorisation systems; (iv) deep fakes, and; (v) synthetic text informing the public on matters of public interest. This commentary offers a detailed analysis of this provision, taking into account the position of article 50 within the AI Act and the broader AI policy context.”





Perspective.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2024/06/rethinking-democracy-for-the-age-of-ai.html

Rethinking Democracy for the Age of AI

There is a lot written about technology’s threats to democracy. Polarization. Artificial intelligence. The concentration of wealth and power. I have a more general story: The political and economic systems of governance that were created in the mid-18th century are poorly suited for the 21st century. They don’t align incentives well. And they are being hacked too effectively.

At the same time, the cost of these hacked systems has never been greater, across all human history. We have become too powerful as a species. And our systems cannot keep up with fast-changing disruptive technologies.

We need to create new systems of governance that align incentives and are resilient against hacking at every scale. From the individual all the way up to the whole of society.

For this, I need you to drop your 20th century either/or thinking. This is not about capitalism versus communism. It’s not about democracy versus autocracy. It’s not even about humans versus AI. It’s something new, something we don’t have a name for yet. And it’s “blue sky” thinking, not even remotely considering what’s feasible today.

Throughout this talk, I want you to think of both democracy and capitalism as information systems. Socio-technical information systems. Protocols for making group decisions. Ones where different players have different incentives. These systems are vulnerable to hacking and need to be secured against those hacks.





Interesting, but I suspect a very small audience.

https://www.dtnext.in/edit/bibliophiles-corner-now-read-the-classics-with-ai-powered-expert-guides-790255

Bibliophile’s corner: Now read the classics with AI-powered expert guides

For the past year, two philosophy professors have been calling around to prominent authors and public intellectuals with an unusual, perhaps heretical, proposal. They have been asking these thinkers if, for a handsome fee, they wouldn’t mind turning themselves into A.I. chatbots.

As Dubuque envisioned it, the imprint would pair a world-class expert with a classic work and use technology similar to ChatGPT to replicate the dialogue between a student and teacher.



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