There’s also a positive side of GenAI that can strengthen democracy
The tech narrative in the last two years has been dominated by artificial intelligence (AI) and the excitement and disruption generated by it. However, the narrative started to sour a little in the latter half of 2023, as ethical issues got thrown up—like copyright, bias, privacy and deepfakes. Now, with elections looming across most of the democratic world, 2024 promises to be the year when AI will experience its first major ethical test—whether it helps democracy or subverts it.
Major democracies like India, the US, UK, Indonesia and others go for pivotal elections this year. While deepfakes existed before GenAI, products like Sora and Stable Diffusion have democratized their production, making them easier, faster and cheaper to make at scale. We are also at peak social media, with WhatsApp, TikTok and the like making their global distribution a piece of cake.
Bangladesh and Slovakia went to polls earlier this year, and deepfakes came to the party. A Bangladeshi opposition leader was shown to be ambivalent about his support for Palestinians, a disastrous position to take in the country. In Slovakian elections, also earlier this year, a major contender reportedly talked about rigging the elections and, even more alarmingly, raising the price of beer, which reportedly contributed to his defeat.
A fake voice of President Joe Biden urged people not to vote in the US primaries. With memories of the 2016 Cambridge Analytica debacle still fresh, these have set off alarm bells as the big elections near. This is where I take a contrarian stance.
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