AI is rapidly making inroads into all aspects of science and technology. A critical issue for American society is the impact that these developments are having and will have on elections.
The fields of artificial intelligence (AI), data science, and analytics have advanced with stunning rapidity over the last decade or so. Among the most striking of the advances has been the appearance of software and service products involving so-called large language models in artificial intelligence. The most widely known of these and the first to receive significant public attention is ChatGPT, a product of the company OpenAI. But AI now powers or will soon power most online search engines. AI is also rapidly making inroads into all aspects of science and technology. A critical issue for American society is the impact that these developments are having and will have on elections.
The League of Women Voters of South Carolina is teaming up with a group of researchers headed by Biplav Srivastava, Ph.D., a professor of computer science and engineering at the University of South Carolina and a member of the University’s Artificial Intelligence Institute. To start the collaboration off, I participated on behalf of the League at the third Workshop on AI for Credible Elections, part of the annual conference of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence in Vancouver at the end of February. Activities at the workshop included panels on “AI non-use for elections,” “AI use for elections,” and “AI enablement for elections,” as well as research presentations on deep fakes, fake news detection, crowdsourced election monitoring, and other topics.
The League is also working to put together a panel discussion for the public in Columbia during the spring and one for the League’s Council meeting in May. This will be an ongoing topic of interest for League members throughout the 2024 election season and beyond, as the technology continues to develop.
--Matthew Saltzman, LWVSC Director for Election Systems and Technology
Interested in learning more or getting involved? Contact me.
