AI is disinforming the public about the U.S. election

AI is disinforming the public about the election:

"Last month, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said in an assessment that found that AI is helping “improve” rather than “revolutionize” influence operations from Russia and Iran aimed at the elections in November.
The risk of this foreign, AI-generated content depends on the ability of foreign operatives to overcome restrictions built into many AI tools, to develop their own sophisticated AI models, or to “strategically target and disseminate” AI-generated content, an ODNI official told reporters. “Foreign actors are behind in each of these three areas.”"
— Ted Barrett and Sean Lyngaas, Senate intelligence committee chairman concerned about AI-generated content and election interference, CNN, October 15, 2024

Previously

"Artificial intelligence is helping “improve” rather than “revolutionize” influence operations from Russia and Iran aimed at November’s US elections, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said in an assessment released Monday.
“The (US intelligence community) considers AI a malign influence accelerant, not yet a revolutionary influence tool,” an ODNI official told reporters."
— Sean Lyngaas, US intel says AI is boosting, but not revolutionizing, foreign efforts to influence the 2024 elections, CNN, September 23, 2024

Please read: By Not Using Gen AI, Am I Burying My Head in the Sand? Yes — and it looks awesome down here. Tucker Lieberman, Sept 25, 2024

I have an "author" responding to a rejection by claiming 1.4 million followers and to have published with me under 6 different pseudonyms. Threatening a campaign of "thousands of negative reviews." The lies go on... and on... Naturally, his story is AI generated. His Amazon novel AI generated too.

— Clarkesworld (@clarkesworldmagazine.com) November 8, 2024 at 12:49 PM

Image of elf ornament from Wikimedia Commons. Taken by Jelene Morris. Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Also

In 2010, anti-copyright activist Aaron Swartz hanged himself after being prosecuted to the full extent of the law for making copyrighted academic publications freely available. Today, academic publishers are insisting those copyrights be lifted to feed the corporate AI slop machine.

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— Dan Hassler-Forest (@danhf.bsky.social) December 18, 2024 at 8:25 AM

I honestly think we are experiencing the end of the internet as those of us born in the 20th c understand it. Smaller, siloed communities like discord servers and newsletters will persist, but the idea of the global public square is dead, as is “the information superhighway.” VCs killed it.

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— G. Willow Wilson (@gwillow.me) January 9, 2025 at 2:37 AM

"Late Tuesday night the Federal Aviation Administration abruptly closed airspace over El Paso, Texas for the extended period of ten days. It was unprecedented. Odd. A little over seven hours later, the airspace was reopened with no explanation.

...within hours another explanation emerged: border officials had caused the closure when they used an anti-drone laser…on a party balloon. Since, the story has evolved to reveal a completely unnecessary standoff between the regime and the FAA.

...this entire affair was a perfect encapsulation of our modern political moment. Something rather large and unprecedented happened without sufficient explanation. We were left in the dark to guess why, which spurred conjecture that reflected everything from fascist imperialism to the supernatural. When an explanation was offered, no one believed the official story. And, for good reason.

These are the ideal conditions for both authoritarian growth and control by a powerful, elite minority.

We are not supposed to know what is going on.

We are not supposed to trust anything.

We are supposed to live in a controlled existence in which we vacillate between demoralized obedience and everpresent insecurity.

For all of its faults, liberal democracy as a product of the Enlightenment was meant to create a society predicated on rational decision-making in a world that was supposed to become more understandable over time. Enlightenment figures fought a revolutionary battle against religion and, by extension, superstition and autocratic control. This battle was based on the concept that as people learned about objective reality they would make better decisions and in turn create a better world.

* * *

If we are left in the dark, unable to tell real from fake, we cannot regulate or ground. We are left dysregulated. Irrational. And, as far as the wealth class is concerned, easy prey."

They Want Us to be Peasants: The key to authoritarianism is a world where we are left in the dark, Jared Yates Sexton, Feb 14, 2026