The Algorithmic Campaign: The Ethics of AI in Modern Politics
From psychographic microtargeting to deepfake attack ads, a critical look at how AI is transforming political campaigns, and the profound threat it poses to democracy.
Introduction: The New Digital Soapbox
The world of political campaigning has been utterly transformed by technology. The old world of stump speeches and TV ads has been replaced by a new and far more sophisticated digital battleground. And the most powerful new weapon in this battle is artificial intelligence. Political campaigns are now using AI for everything from microtargeting voters with personalized ads to generating campaign speeches and even creating deepfake videos of their opponents. This is a new era of “algorithmic politics,” and it is a world that is fraught with profound ethical questions about the future of our democracy.
The AI-Powered Campaign’s Toolkit
- Psychographic Microtargeting: As we’ve discussed, campaigns are using AI to analyze vast amounts of voter data to create detailed psychological profiles, which are then used to target voters with highly personalized and emotionally resonant advertising.
- Generative AI for Campaign Materials: An AI can now be used to instantly generate a dozen different versions of a fundraising email or a social media post, which can then be A/B tested to see which one is the most effective.
- Deepfakes and Disinformation: The ability to create a realistic but fake video or audio clip of a political opponent is a powerful and dangerous new tool for spreading disinformation and smearing a candidate.
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The Erosion of the Public Square
The rise of algorithmic politics is a profound threat to the health of our democracy:
- The End of the Shared Conversation: In a world of microtargeting, we are no longer having a shared, public debate. We are each living in our own personalized political reality, a filter bubble of curated content that is designed to reinforce our existing biases.
- The Rise of “Sludge”: Generative AI makes it incredibly cheap and easy to create a massive amount of low-quality, divisive, and often false political content, which can be used to drown out legitimate journalism and to make it impossible for voters to distinguish between what is real and what is fake.
Conclusion: A New and Unregulated Battlefield
The use of AI in political campaigning is a new and largely unregulated frontier. It is a powerful set of tools that can be used to engage voters and to make campaigns more efficient. But it is also a set of tools that can be used to manipulate, to deceive, and to divide. As we move deeper into this new era of algorithmic politics, the need for a new set of rules and norms to protect the integrity of our democratic conversation has never been more urgent.
What do you think should be the ethical “red line” for the use of AI in a political campaign? Let’s have a critical and important discussion in the comments.
