How Generative AI Content Could Influence the U.S. Election

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Valerie Wirtschafter: “…The contested nature of the presidential race means such efforts will undoubtedly continue, but they likely will remain discoverable, and their reach and ability to shape election outcomes will be minimal. Instead, the most meaningful uses of generative AI content could occur in highly targeted scenarios just prior to the election and/or in a contentious post-election environment where experience has demonstrated that potential “evidence” of malfeasance need not be true to mobilize a small subset of believers to act.

Because U.S. elections are managed at the state and county levels, low-level actors in some swing precincts or counties are catapulted to the national spotlight every four years. Since these actors are not well known to the public, targeted and personal AI-generated content can cause significant harm. Before the election, this type of fabricated content could take the form of a last-minute phone call by someone claiming to be election worker alerting voters to an issue at their polling place.

After the election, it could become harassment of election officials or “evidence” of foul play. Due to the localized and personalized nature of this type of effort, it could be less rapidly discoverable for unknown figures not regularly in the public eye, difficult to debunk or prevent with existing tools and guardrails, and damaging to reputations. This tailored approach need not be driven by domestic actors—in fact, in the lead up to the 2020 elections, Iranian actors pretended to be members of the Proud Boys and sent threatening emails to Democratic voters in select states demanding they vote for Donald Trump. Although election officials have worked tirelessly to brace for this possibility, they are correct to be on guard…(More)”

Buried Academic Treasures

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Barrett and Greene: “…one of the presenters who said: “We have lots of research that leads to no results.”

As some of you know, we’ve written a book with Don Kettl to help academically trained researchers write in a way that would be understandable by decision makers who could make use of their findings. But the keys to writing well are only a small part of the picture. Elected and appointed officials have the capacity to ignore nearly anything, no matter how well written it is.

This is more than just a frustration to researchers, it’s a gigantic loss to the world of public administration. We spend lots of time reading through reports and frequently come across nuggets of insights that we believe could help make improvements in nearly every public sector endeavor from human resources to budgeting to performance management to procurement and on and on. We, and others, can do our best to get attention for this kind of information, but that doesn’t mean that the decision makers have the time or the inclination to take steps toward taking advantage of great ideas.

We don’t want to place the blame for the disconnect between academia and practitioners on either party. To one degree or the other they’re both at fault, with taxpayers and the people who rely on government services – and that’s pretty much everybody except for people who have gone off the grid – as the losers.

Following, from our experience, are six reasons we believe that it’s difficult to close the gap between the world of research and the realm of utility. The first three are aimed at government leaders, the last three have academics in mind…(More)”

‘Evidence banks’ can drive better decisions in public life

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Anjana Ahuja: “Modern life is full of urgent questions to which governments should be seeking answers. Does working from home — WFH — damage productivity? Do LTNs (low-traffic neighbourhoods) cut air pollution? Are policy ideas that can be summed up in three-letter acronyms more palatable to the public than those, say Ulez, requiring four? 

That last one is tongue-in-cheek — but the point stands. While clinical trials can tell us reasonably confidently whether a drug or treatment works, a similar culture of evaluation is generally lacking for other types of intervention, such as crime prevention. Now research funders are stepping into the gap to build “evidence banks” or evidence syntheses: globally accessible one-stop shops for assessing the weight of evidence on a particular topic.

Last month, the Economic and Social Research Council, together with the Wellcome Trust, pledged a total of around £54mn to develop a database and tools that can collate and make sense of evidence in complex areas like climate change and healthy ageing. The announcement, Nature reports, was timed to coincide with the UN Summit of the Future, a conference in New York geared to improving the world for future generations.

Go-to repositories of good quality information that can feed the policy machine are essential. They normalise the role of robust evidence in public life. This matters: the policy pipeline has too often lacked due diligence. That can mean public money being squandered on ineffective wheezes, or worse.

Take Scared Straight, a crime prevention scheme originating in the US around 40 years ago and adopted in the UK. It was designed to keep teens on the straight and narrow by introducing them to prisoners. Those dalliances with delinquents were counterproductive. A review showed that children taking part were more likely to end up committing crimes than those who did not participate in the scheme…(More)”.

How to rebuild democracy to truly harness the power of the people

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Kyle Ellingson: “Many of us entered this so-called super-election year with a sense of foreboding. So far, not much has happened to allay those fears. Russia’s war on Ukraine is exacerbating a perception that democracy is threatened in Europe and beyond. In the US, Donald Trump, a presidential candidate with self-professed autocratic tendencies, has faced two assassination attempts. And more broadly, people seem to be losing faith in politics. “Most people from a diverse array of countries around the world lack confidence in the performance of their political institutions,” says a 2024 report by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance.

On many objective measures, too, democracy isn’t functioning as it should. The systems we call democracies tend to favour the rich. Political violence is growing, as is legislative gridlock, and worldwide, elections are becoming less free and fair. Some 30 years after commentators crowed about the triumph of Western liberal democracy, their prediction seems further than ever from being realised. What happened?

According to Lex Paulson at the University Mohammed VI Polytechnic in Rabat, Morocco, we have lost sight of what democracy is. “We have made a terrible confusion between the system known as a republic – which relies on elections, parties and a permanent governing class – and the system known as a democracy, in which citizens directly participate in decisions and rotate power.” …(More)”.

China: Autocracy 2.0

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by David Y. Yang: “Autocracy 2.0, exemplified by modern China, is economically robust, technologically advanced, globally engaged, and controlled through subtle and sophisticated methods. What defines China’s political economy, and what drives Autocracy 2.0? What is its future direction? I start by discussing two key challenges autocracies face: incentives and information. I then describe Autocracy 1.0’s reliance on fear and repression to address these issues. It makes no credible promises, using coercion for compliance, resulting in a low-information environment. Next, I introduce Autocracy 2.0, highlighting its significant shift in handling commitment and information challenges. China uses economic incentives to align interests with regime survival, fostering support. It employs advanced bureaucratic structures and technology to manage incentives and information, enabling success in a high-information environment. Finally, I explore Autocracy 3.0’s potential. In China, forces might revert to Autocracy 1.0, using technology for state control as growth slows but aspirations stay high. Globally, modern autocracies, led by China, are becoming major geopolitical forces, challenging the liberal democratic order…(More)”.

Digitally Invisible: How the Internet is Creating the New Underclass

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Nicol Turner Lee: “President Joe Biden has repeatedly said that the United States would close the digital divide under his leadership. However, the divide still affects people and communities across the country. The complex and persistent reality is that millions of residents live in digital deserts, and many more face disproportionate difficulties when it comes to getting and staying online, especially people of color, seniors, rural residents, and farmers in remote areas.

Economic and health disparities are worsening in rural communities without available internet access. Students living in urban digital deserts with little technology exposure are ill prepared to compete for emerging occupations. Even seniors struggle to navigate the aging process without access to online information and remote care.

In this book, Nicol Turner Lee, a leading expert on the American digital divide, uses personal stories from individuals around the country to show how the emerging digital underclass is navigating the spiraling online economy, while sharing their joys and hopes for an equitable and just future.

Turner Lee argues that achieving digital equity is crucial for the future of America’s global competitiveness and requires radical responses to offset the unintended consequences of increasing digitization. In the end, “Digitally Invisible” proposes a pathway to more equitable access to existing and emerging technologies, while encouraging readers to weigh in on this shared goal…(More)”.

Kenya’s biggest protest in recent history played out on a walkie-talkie app

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Stephanie Wangari: “Betty had never heard of the Zello app until June 18.

But as she participated in Kenya’s “GenZ protests” that month — one of the biggest in the country’s history — the app became her savior.

On Zello, “we were getting updates and also updating others on where the tear-gas canisters were being lobbed and which streets had been cordoned off,” Betty, 27, told Rest of World, requesting to be identified by a pseudonym as she feared backlash from the police. “At one point, I also alerted the group [about] suspected undercover investigative officers who were wearing balaclavas.”

The speed of communicating over Zello made it the primary tool to mobilize crowds and coordinate logistics during the protests. Stephanie Wangari

Nairobi witnessed massive protests in June as thousands of young Kenyans came out on the streets against a proposed bill that would increase taxes on staple foods and other essential goods and services. At least 39 people were killed, 361 were injured, and more than 335 were arrested by the police during the protests, according to human rights groups.

Amid the mayhem, Zello, an app developed by U.S. engineer Alexey Gavrilov in 2007, became the primary tool for protestors to communicate, mobilize crowds, and coordinate logistics. Six protesters told Rest of World that Zello, which allows smartphones to be used as walkie-talkies, helped them find meeting points, evade the police, and alert each other to potential dangers. 

Digital services experts and political analysts said the app helped the protests become one of the most effective in the country’s history.

According to Herman Manyora, a political analyst and lecturer at the University of Nairobi, mobilization had always been the greatest challenge in organizing previous protests in Kenya. The ability to turn their “phones into walkie-talkies” made the difference for protesters, he told Rest of World.

“The government realized that the young people were able to navigate technological challenges. You switch off one app, such as [X], they move to another,” Manyora said.

Zello was downloaded over 40,000 times on the Google Play store in Kenya between June 17 and June 25, according to data from the company. This was “well above our usual numbers,” a company spokesperson told Rest of World. Zello did not respond to additional requests for comment…(More)“

Against Elections: The Lottocratic Alternative

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Alexander A. Guerrero: “It is widely accepted that electoral representative democracy is better — along a number of different normative dimensions — than any other alternative lawmaking political arrangement. It is not typically seen as much of a competition: it is also widely accepted that the only legitimate alternative to electoral representative democracy is some form of direct democracy, but direct democracy — we are told — would lead to bad policy. This article makes the case that there is a legitimate alternative system — one that uses lotteries, not elections, to select political officials — that would be better than electoral representative democracy. Part I diagnoses two significant failings of modern-day systems of electoral representative government: the failure of responsiveness and the failure of good governance. The argument offered suggests that these flaws run deep, so that even significant and politically unlikely reforms with respect to campaign finance and election law would make little difference. Although my distillation of the argument is novel, the basic themes will likely be familiar. I anticipate the initial response to the argument may be familiar as well: the Churchillian shrug. Parts II, III, and IV of this article represent the beginning of an effort to move past that response, to think about alternative political systems that might avoid some of the problems with the electoral representative system without introducing new and worse problems. In the second and third parts of the article, I outline an alternative political system, the lottocratic system, and present some of the virtues of such a system. In the fourth part of the article, I consider some possible problems for the system. The overall aims of this article are to raise worries for electoral systems of government, to present the lottocratic system and to defend the view that this system might be a normatively attractive alternative, removing a significant hurdle to taking a non-electoral system of government seriously as a possible improvement to electoral democracy…(More)”

United Nations Global Principles for Information Integrity

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

United Nations: “Technological advances have revolutionized communications, connecting people on a previously unthinkable scale. They have supported communities in times of crisis, elevated marginalized voices and helped mobilize global movements for racial justice and gender equality.

Yet these same advances have enabled the spread of misinformation, disinformation and hate speech at an unprecedented volume, velocity and virality, risking the integrity of the information ecosystem.

New and escalating risks stemming from leaps in AI technologies have made strengthening information integrity one of the urgent tasks of our time.

This clear and present global threat demands coordinated international action.

The United Nations Global Principles for Information Integrity show us another future is possible…(More)”

The tools of global spycraft have changed

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

The Economist: “A few years ago intelligence analysts observed that internet-connected CCTV cameras in Taiwan and South Korea were inexplicably talking to vital parts of the Indian power grid. The strange connection turned out to be a deliberately circuitous route by which Chinese spies were communicating with malware they had previously buried deep inside crucial parts of the Indian grid (presumably to enable future sabotage). The analysts spotted it because they were scanning the internet to look for “command and control” (c2) nodes—such as cameras—that hackers use as stepping stones to their victims.

The attack was not revealed by an Indian or Western intelligence agency, but by Recorded Future, a firm in Somerville, Massachusetts. Christopher Ahlberg, its boss, claims the company has knowledge of more c2 nodes than anyone in the world. “We use that to bust Chinese and Russian intel operations constantly.” It also has billions of stolen log-in details found on the dark web (a hard-to-access part of the internet) and collects millions of images daily. “We know every UK company, every Chinese company, every Indian company,” says Mr Ahlberg.  Recorded Future has 1,700 clients in 75 countries, including 47 governments.

The Chinese intrusion and its discovery were a microcosm of modern intelligence. The internet, and devices connected to it, is everywhere, offering opportunities galore for surveillance, entrapment and covert operations. The entities monitoring it, and acting on it, are often private firms, not government agencies…(More)” See Special Issue on Watching the Watchers