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Recent news that the Republican National Committee (RNC) has used an AI-generated video to criticize Joe Biden shows how likely AI is to transform our upcoming elections. Advances in digital technology provide new and faster tools for political messaging and could have a profound impact on how voters, politicians, and reporters see the candidates and the campaign. We are no longer talking about photoshopping small tweaks to how a person looks or putting someones head on another individuals body, but rather moving to an era where wholesale digital creation and dissemination are going to take place. Through templates that are easy and inexpensive to use, we are going to face a Wild West of campaign claims and counter-claims, with limited ability to distinguish fake from real material and uncertainty regarding how these appeals will affect the election.

Politicians can use generative AI to respond instantly to campaign developments. In the RNCs case, it released its new video right after Bidens reelection announcement. It did not appear the party went through extensive shooting, editing, or review. Rather, it simply asked the tool to put together a video that detailed a dystopian U.S. future if Biden were reelected.

In the coming year, response times may drop to minutes, not hours or days. AI can scan the internet, think about strategy, and come up with a hard-hitting appeal. That could be a speech, press release, picture, joke, or video touting the benefits of one candidate over another. AI provides an inexpensive way to generate instant responses without having to rely on highly-paid consultants or expert videographers.

AI enables very precise audience targeting, which is crucial in political campaigns. Candidates dont want to waste money on those who already support or oppose their campaign. Rather, they want to target the small number of swing voters who will decide the actual election or suppress the turnout of those supporting the other campaign. With our high rates of political polarization, only a small percentage of the electorate says they are undecided at the presidential level. According to an April, 2023 Emerson College survey, only six percent of voters are undecided with 43 percent supporting Biden, 41 percent favoring Trump, and 10 percent preferring another candidate.

The closeness of the general election indicates ways in which AI can help candidates. Using microdata from commercial data brokers who have detailed information of peoples reading, viewing, purchasing, and political behavior, campaigners will be able to fine-tune their targeting, reach those who have not yet made up their minds, and give them the exact message that will help them reach their final decisions. By analyzing this material in real-time, AI will enable campaigners to go after specific voting blocs with appeals that nudge them around particular policies and partisan opinions.

AI likely will democratize disinformation by bringing sophisticated tools to the average person interested in promoting their preferred candidates as well. People no longer must be coding experts or video wizards to generate text, images, video, or programs. They dont necessarily have to work for a troll farm to create havoc with the opposition. They can simply use advanced technologies to spread the messages they want. In that sense, anyone can become a political content creator and seek to sway voters or the media.

With emotions running intensely in a high-stakes election, many voters also may have incentives to spread false information designed to undermine the opposition. If someone can create noise, build uncertainty, or develop false narratives, that could be an effective way to sway voters and win the race. Since the 2024 presidential election may come down to tens of thousands of voters in a few states, anything that can nudge people in one direction or another could end up being decisive.

New technologies enable people to monetize discontent and make money off other peoples fears, anxieties, or anger. Generative AI can develop messages aimed at those upset with immigration, the economy, abortion policy, critical race theory, transgender issues, or the Ukraine war. It can also create messages that take advantage of social and political discontent, and use AI as a major engagement and persuasion tool.

What makes the coming year particularly worrisome is the lack of guardrails or disclosure requirements that protect voters against fake news, disinformation, or false narratives. Since campaign speech is protected speech, candidates can say and do pretty much whatever they want without risk of legal reprisal. Even if their claims are patently false, judges long have upheld candidate rights to speak freely and falsely. Defamation lawsuits of the type seen this year with Fox News are rare in regard to political candidates and work only with well-resourced litigants.

Neither individuals nor organizations are required to disclose that they used generative AI to manufacture videos or develop specific campaign appeals. The RNC deserves kudos for its voluntary disclosure of its recent commercial, but there is little reason to think that will become the norm. It is more likely that people will use new content tools without any public disclosure and it will be impossible for voters to distinguish real from fake appeals.

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How AI will transform the 2024 elections - Brookings Institution

This is part of our coverage of Northeasterns 2023 commencement exercises. For more information, including a livestream, photos and live coverage throughout the day, visit our dedicated commencement page.

Amid so much professional change and upheaval awaiting Northeasterns class of 2023, President Joseph E. Aoun assured the sea of graduates during Sundays commencement ceremonies that their Northeastern education has prepared them to meet those vicissitudes head-on.

When you leave this ceremony today, your journeys will be defined by career mobility, Aoun said. Geographic mobility. Global mobility.

Its precisely that mobility, the ability to work, study and make connections across borders and continents, that constituted one part of Aouns commencement message: that opportunity is always in motion, referring to the half-dozen job changes and relocations that the graduates will experience, on average.

In keeping with tradition, Sundays commencement took place in Bostons historic Fenway Park, bringing together thousands of graduates and their guests on what proved to be a picturesque spring afternoon.

Richard A. DAmore, chair of Northeasterns Board of Trustees and a benefactor of the DAmore-Mckim School of Business, introduced Aoun.

Aoun conferred three honorary degrees after his remarksto Alberto Ibargen, president of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and former publisher of The Miami Herald; Alondra Nelson, former deputy assistant to President Joe Biden and acting director at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy; and e-commerce pioneerMariam Naficy, who delivered the undergraduate commencement speech.

Canadian Deputy Prime MinisterChrystia Freeland, who spoke to graduate students earlier in the day, was also awarded an honorary degree.

Prior to his speech, a video produced in the style of TikToks get ready with me trend, was aired of Aoun preparing for the afternoon.

Change of another kind also served as the backdrop of this years ceremonynamely, the sweeping changes brought on by developments in artificial intelligence. Some of those changes will almost certainly mean major disruptions in the job market and how work is performed, Aoun said.

In the midst of so much buzz over the developments in AI, it was only fitting that ChatGPT made an appearance at commencement.

In preparing my speech today, I decided to ask ChatGPT to give me the top five commencement speech clichs of all time, said Aoun.

The chatbot produced a series of cringeworthy commencement platitudes, such as believe in yourself, follow your dreams, among othersworn-out phrases that come up over and over again, Aoun said.

In light of the dizzying and potentially far-reaching developments of AI in recent months, Aoun emphasized that as this years graduates move on to their next chapters, the need for what he called human literacy takes on even greater importance. The march of technological progress, he said, will lead to the automation of most industries, including jobs that were previously the sole province of college graduates.

Machines and artificial intelligence will continue to improve every day, Aoun said. These innovations will have a profound impact on all of us. Some will be beneficial, and others will not. There are people calling for society to hit the pause button out of fear that we will lose control of machines.

Aoun continued: There are countless ways to exercise our human literacy. Giving assistance to someone lost at the train station. Capturing an emotion through color or music. Launching a nonprofit to end hunger. Standing with strangers to fight injustice.

As all current and former students know, the educational experience at Northeastern is unique in the sense that students are encouraged to make the world their classrooman ethos thats associated with Northeastern Universitys world-leading co-op program.

Your time at Northeastern was not confined to a campus, Aoun said. You had co-ops and dialogues and global experiences that allowed you to roam. These experiences empowered you to live and learn in different contexts and different countries.

Turning back to AI, Aoun stressed that amid fears over the trajectory of the emerging technology, human beings will always have an edge over the machines.

But for the foreseeable future computational power cannot express empathy, Aoun said. Microprocessors cannot comfort the afflicted. An algorithm cannot remedy the sting of systemic racism.

In a bid to get the graduates to think beyond the social media bubbles they may find themselves in, Aoun imparted one final piece of advice: Get out of your TikTok tunnel.

Social media algorithms create like-minded echo chambers he said. They cause us to harden our views and stake out positions on the extremes.

They can even lead us to demonize those who disagree with uscreating a new digital tribalism reinforced through information silos, he said.

And with that, Aoun sent the young graduates off into the afternoon.

So flex your human literacies every day, he said. In your life and in your work. This is your edge.

After all, machines dont dream of lifting trophies, Aoun said. They dont reimagine the world. They do not weep.

Tanner Stening is a Northeastern Global News reporter. Email him at t.stening@northeastern.edu. Follow him on Twitter @tstening90.

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AI Can't Replace Empathy: President Aoun's Message to Grads - Northeastern University