OUR PICKSFakery, Confusion & AI in 2024 Campaign | Russia Sought to Kill Defector in Florida | Manifestos & Lone Wolf Terrorism, and more
· Fakery and Confusion: Campaigns Brace for Explosion of AI in 2024
Ready or not, AI is here. Campaigns have to figure it out.
· Humans Aren’t Mentally Ready for an AI-Saturated ‘Post-Truth World’
The AI era promises a flood of disinformation, deepfakes, and hallucinated “facts.” Psychologists are only beginning to grapple with the implications.
· FBI Resisted Opening Probe into Trump’s Role in Jan. 6 for More Than a Year
In the DOJ’s investigation of Jan. 6, key Justice officials also quashed an early plan for a task force focused on people in Trump’s orbit
· Russia Sought to Kill Defector in Florida
A failed plot to assassinate a C.I.A. spy in 2020 in part led to expulsions of the agency’s chief in Moscow and his Russian counterpart in Washington
· Oath Keepers Attorney Is Found Incompetent to Stand Trial in Jan. 6 Case
A volunteer for Lawyers for Trump, Kellye SoRelle became Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes’s girlfriend and a key post-2020 election contact with ‘Stop the Steal’ groups
· How a Shady Chinese Firm’s Encryption Chips Got Inside the US Navy, NATO, and NASA
The US government warns encryption chipmaker Hualan has suspicious ties to China’s military. Yet US agencies still use one of its subsidiary’s chips, raising fears of a backdoor.
· What the Heck Is Going on With These U.F.O. Stories?
Testifying under oath to Congress, a whistleblower said that a covert government program is in possession of crash materials of “nonhuman origin”
· Break the Chain: Manifestos, Lone Wolf Terrorism, and the Nashville Shooting
Manifestos posted by mass shooters influence other extremists contemplating violence, and we should be aware of risks associated with their publication
· The Threat to Law Enforcement and Critical Infrastructure from Chinese Drones
Wherever a drone is flown, data is collected and stored
Fakery and Confusion: Campaigns Brace for Explosion of AI in 2024 (Madison Fernandez, Politico)
Dozens of Democratic strategists gathered on Zoom on Wednesday for a novel meeting. The topic: How to combat an expected explosion of AI-generated fake content flooding TV airwaves and mailboxes in 2024.
The meeting, hosted by the progressive group Arena, drew more than 70 officials. They talked about how generative AI could produce misinformation and disinformation at a pace and scale campaigns have not experienced before.
The convention, to which a POLITICO reporter was granted access, wasn’t a gathering of Luddites. Most were clear-eyed about the need to train campaign staff on how to use the technology. But operatives emphasized the need to teach voters how to identify misinformation and disinformation powered by AI.
Earlier this year, the American Association of Political Consultants’ board of directors unanimously condemned the use of deep fakes in political advertising. “The use of ‘deep fake’ generative [AI] content is a dramatically different and dangerous threat to democracy,” Becki Donatelli, a Republican digital consultant and president of the AAPC, said in a statement at the time.
There is currently no federal requirement to include a disclaimer in campaign ads when AI is used to create images, though such bills have been introduced in Congress. Washington state recently signed into law legislation that would require a disclosure when AI is used in campaign ads.
Humans Aren’t Mentally Ready for an AI-Saturated ‘Post-Truth World’ (Thor Benson, Wired)
Artificial Intelligence is arguably the most rapidly advancing technology humans have ever developed. A year ago you wouldn’t often hear AI come up in a regular conversation, but today it seems there’s constant talk about how generative AI tools like ChatGPT and DALL-E will affect the future of work, the spread of information, and more. A major question that has thus far been almost entirely unexamined is how this AI-dominated future will affect people’s minds.
There’s been some research into how using AI in their jobs will affect people mentally, but there isn’t yet an understanding of how simply living amongst so much AI-generated content and systems will affect people’s sense of the world. How is AI going to change individuals and society in the not-too-distant future?
