AI Generated: KSSZ July 19th, 2023

: Published: 19 July 2023

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become an integral part of our lives, impacting various industries and sectors. One area where AI generated content is making its presence felt is in elections and political campaigns. The KSSZ radio show on July 19th, 2023, featured a discussion on the use of AI in elections with guest speaker Raven Harrison, shedding light on the potential implications and concerns surrounding AI generated content.

KSSZ July 19th, 2023 with Raven Harrison

Wake Up Mid-Missouri

During the radio show, host Stephanie Bell and guest Raven Harrison explored the growing influence of AI in political campaigns. They touched upon recent instances where AI-generated content played a significant role, such as an AI generated ad criticizing Joe Biden's re-election announcement, which was released within minutes of his speech. This real-time response time allowed for immediate critique even before the speech concluded, raising concerns about the impact of AI on elections.

Raven Harrison emphasized the need for regulation in this space, citing the Federal Election Commission's reluctance to regulate content that is AI generated in elections. The absence of clear guidelines opens the door for anyone with access to social media to become a political content creator, raising questions about misinformation, accountability, and the potential manipulation of public opinion.

Transcript

Stephanie Bell: We're also joined by Raven Harrison. And a couple weeks ago, for what's hot with Hannah, Hannah unlocked, she said a new wedding fear had been unlocked in that I think a wedding store had closed and the brides could not get ahold of their dresses.
Hannah Adkisson: Yes, a bridal shop just up and defaulted on their lease and left a bunch of brides hanging.
Stephanie: And as I was chatting with Raven yesterday, I have had a new election fear unlocked and we've talked a lot about the ills of AI. And I, you know, I tend to think it's a good thing, but it freaks me out. Brandon is completely obsessed with it and regularly has long conversation. And I think long walks on the beach with chat GPT. But I tend to be a little bit more skeptical. I haven't really other than, you know, artificial images and some of these, you know, kind of silly social media memes, I haven't really seen it used politically. So Raven, what's the big talk about AI in elections?
Raven Harrison: Well, the talk is that the FEC is saying they're not going to regulate, which is pretty much par for the course right now of government saying, you know, we're really not going to do our job. And we're not going to give you a reason why. But here's where you've seen it in real time. So when Joe Biden announced he was running for re-election or the teleprompter told him he was running for re-election, he had that that speech made within minutes of his making that announcement. There was an artificial intelligence. There was an ad generated an AI generated ad from the Republicans coming out and immediately criticizing. And that is real time usually response time is in the days, definitely in the hours, but never in the minutes. So that means they can literally criticize you before you finish your speech. But it's told from, excuse me, from all these different sources online, which means you don't have to have a specific content tool or political creator. You anyone can do this. Anybody online then can pull multiple ads and put out an ad, you know, multiple sources and put out an ad like this. I can have the danger of anybody can be now a content creator and that is that should scare everyone.
Stephanie: And I can see it though being used both ways. I mean, you said we need a little bit of regulation in this space. And I don't think I necessarily disagree with that. But we were just chatting with Steve about his, his article with Missouri v Biden and social media companies, you know, censoring speech. If we, you know, let the government step in and start regulating AI, wouldn't we just get more of the same type of censorship potentially?
Raven: Well, here's the dilemma. So right now we've got an issue where such Zuckerberg had put $400 million. Tech giant has put $400 million into influencing elections for a particular party. Now we're going to turn this over to average. I mean, anybody could be you could be me could potentially be behind these multiple anonymous sources, putting these ads together could be partially true, could be wholly untrue. We don't absolutely know. And then we've got on the flip side of saying, okay, well, this is protected first amendment speech, the first amendment cover AI, does it cover artificial intelligence? Is that a constitutional right for, you know, AI? That's a really deep one. If you take a look at it.
Brian Hauswirth: Yeah, human created machine, there's programmers that kind of put the parameters in it. And then it kind of summarizes things based on computer programming. And I think it goes back to the viewer, the consumer of social media or whatever platform it is, they're looking at, what do you trust? What is actually human derived for one thing? And what's a robot? You know, when you go to these websites to log in or sign up for an email list, it has a checkbox, I'm not a robot, right? And you got to pick the pictures of the bus or the bicycle or the traffic light or whatever. Those are the worst. And it's a filter. So there is a boss, but yeah, it's what do you trust? I think it's a good point.
Raven: How do you having to tell a computer that you're not a robot is probably the irony of the century. But again, what falls into protected free speech that is a constitutional right for people. So if we're going to start getting on that slippery slope of, you know, do AI, do robots qualify for protected speech?
Stephanie: Well, and I also, I mean, I think I'm a little bit worried because, you know, the high powers that be in tech tend to lean more left. And so I worry about the Democrats getting out in front of us on this on AI and then us being at a disadvantage, I was concerned on Monday as we were recapping Iowa and everything that had happened over the weekend and the news about the DeSantis campaign. And I checked his Twitter trying to figure trying to grab some clips from Iowa and he went silent between July 13 and July 17. No tweets at all after they had said, Oh, he, you know, his campaign staff is dwindling and all these things. And you know, I'm thinking he could have used AI for those four days to at least keep his Twitter account up and engaged in rolling. So I worry a little bit about us, you know, being afraid of it and then getting behind on it and not using it to our advantage. Are we are we paying attention at all or trying to learn this?
Raven: Well, it's kind of interesting. You have an interesting point, but here's the the duplicity of it is we don't we don't know fully, you know, what that's capable or who's going to jump in or what legs this is going to take. So we've already got the governing body saying, you know, most of this will be protected. We're going to let these gray area stands. So if you are the candidate, if you were DeSantis and somebody just start, you know, posting God knows what I mean, what is your recourse? What recourse will you have? If this becomes, you know, out of bounds, if this goes into the completely untrue ad, if this goes into, okay, it's a voiceover and it's not mine. How do I prove that this is not deep? It's not my image. I mean, and then the people are saying, well, you're kind of on yourself because we're not going to, we're not going to get involved. We are where it should be.
Stephanie: Sure. We are talking with Raven Harrison. Check out ravenharrison.com. She's got books and some fiery socials. So check out her website.
Brian: Raven we saw scale AI CEO Alexander Wang, the wonderkin who works with the Pentagon on AI and he testified before the armed services committee. I think it was just yesterday and said, look out because the Chinese are spending three times what the US is into weaponizing AI.
Raven: Well, they are. I mean, this is something everybody wants to be on the front frontier for. But this is, we have to be very, very careful. We barely have a handle. And we still have a lot of issues we have not dealt with in the 2020 election. We couldn't handle stuffed paper, mail ballots. And now we're getting ready to go into a new frontier where pretty much anyone with access to social media can become a political content creator with absolutely no oversight or regulation. And that includes you. If you didn't like what Zuckerberg's doing, you're really not going to like what the kid in his basement is doing.
Stephanie: Or what China's doing.
Raven: Right. I mean, or what China's doing. Yeah, that's terrifying.
Stephanie: Well, I think you and I chatted before. I think all of the news yesterday on Trump came out. Trump appears to be facing potentially a third indictment. Any thoughts on that on that little latest?
Raven: Oh, yeah, this is the spaghetti doctor. We're gonna throw everything at the wall and pray that something sticks. This is proof to what I've always been saying. They cannot stop them. Stop him. So this is big. They're literally desperate to keep him from running. And what I tell people is it doesn't matter what side you're on. This is showing you that the government thinks they know better who you should allow. They should allow to run for office. And this is fundamentally against we the people. They don't get to decide this. It is not up to the powers that be up there to decide, you know, who we allow to become president, who we elect, who we select. They are trying to appoint who they want that will do what they want. The people who created these problems over decades now, you know, are going to fix all of them. That's anything but Trump. So this should concern you. This is a pushback we can't have. We can't have politicians deciding they know better than the people who elected them.
Stephanie: But the most recent polling is showing that Trump is the weaker candidate, right? And so do they think that by doing this, the people are going to actually coalesce around Trump and pick him as the nominee because of the outrage of him being targeted? Because, you know, right now the polling showing perhaps DeSantis would perform better against Trump. So why aren't they I mean, they are kind of going after DeSantis, but not nearly.
Brian: Like back in the day, Senator Claire McCaskill in Missouri. We talked up Todd Akin who said might be the weaker candidate in the general election. And it worked. And then he stuck his foot in his mouth and she walked away with it. So that kind of worked. Raven, what's your thoughts?
Raven: Well, what my thoughts are that I probably trust, you know, expired gas stations through she more than I thought most of these polls. So I would say, you know, I can have a poll, you know, probably by the end of the day saying I'm the best looking podcast, podcast host out there. And it doesn't mean that it has any legs. So Trump is definitely the front runner. So who are they polling? You know, if you look at the polls, if you want to look at Democrat polls, they were saying that 73% in January right around the state of the union said that they didn't want Joe Biden to run 73% of Democrats from a Gallup poll. Said they did not want Joe Biden to run that he did not seem competent. And yet here he is. And they're wanting us to believe now that these polls and since then, you know, he's tripping over air. We found crack in the White House. We are literally at this point and people are saying, well, it's still better than Trump. I really don't think so. You know, when's the last time, you know, now we've got a real life version of whose line is it anyway on there. And it's ridiculous.
Stephanie: Now let's take DeSantis and Trump off the table. We've seen more airtime by all of these other candidates in the last week, I think, than we have yet. And I'm just I want to get your opinion. Were there obviously, I think the consensus is that Mike Pence had a not so great appearance in Iowa. But who outperformed who overperformed what you thought and might, you know, hit, you know, be a good VP candidate or, or, you know, propel themselves into national politics.
Raven: Well, but looking at it, you know, statistically, I'm really grateful Mike Pence really just set the the bar on torpedoing his own campaign with Tucker Carlson. I would say that, you know, close second of Nikki Haley hold my beer, basically spending the first part of her interview saying that there were all these irregularities in the 2020 election and then ending with saying that she legitimately thought Joe Biden got 81 million votes, which is kind of talking out of both sides. I don't think Tim Scott has gained really much traction. But I do believe a rising superstar that people are looking at is Byron Daniels. I mean, he is a rock star out of Florida, a congressman who seems to have a lot of substance to him, even though he's not declared.
Brian: Yeah, I appreciate those comments. You know, kind of going back to the AI thing, you know, I'm cautious about, you know, government regulation, as kind of Steph was saying earlier. But, you know, Twitter put the blue check mark on verified content providers like, hey, they are actually real, not a fake account. What about, you know, a regulation that might make sense that AI generated content on social media has to have a maybe a little disclaimer thing like, hey, this was computer generator or something like that. Would that be a basic place to start?
Raven: I think it would be overlooked and probably dismissed as easily as it was put up there. It would be a money making opportunity for sure. But I don't see that that provides any kind of credibility, especially when you know to the blue check, you're paying for it. So you're not, it doesn't provide any kind of credibility or authentication. It just shows that you were willing to pay to have the blue check, you know, with Twitter and the others and still gives some sort of regulatory control to these tech giants, which is what we don't want. We don't want these supposed to be publishers, publishers are supposed to be neutral and they get a lot of protection and tax relief for being neutral. So they can't be, you can't have roots and wings. Because my dad just said, you have to decide which side of the fence you're on.
Stephanie: Well, Raven, we always enjoy hearing your thoughts here on Wake Up Mid-Missouri. We encourage all everyone to check out her website ravenharison.com. She's got books, she's got fiery social media and catch her on Fox sometimes and her other podcast shows and all of that. So thanks so much, Raven, for joining us.
Raven: Thanks for having me.

AI Generated Wrap-up

The discussion on KSSZ radio shed light on the increasing influence of AI generated content in elections and the concerns it raises. While some argue for regulation to protect against misinformation and manipulation, others raise concerns about potential censorship and the infringement of free speech. The conversation highlighted the urgent need for a balanced approach to AI use in elections, where the interests of free speech, election integrity, and accountability are carefully considered.

It is crucial for policymakers, organizations, and citizens to actively engage in the ongoing conversation surrounding AI-generated content in elections. By staying informed, voicing concerns, and advocating for responsible AI use, we can contribute to shaping a future where technology is harnessed to enhance democracy rather than undermine it. Let us take part in the dialogue and work towards establishing transparent guidelines and regulations to safeguard the integrity of elections while respecting the principles of free speech.