Part of the Electoral Frontiers webinar series, which includes "Combating Disenfranchisement and Building Transparency" and "Democracy's Challenge to Rising Authoritarianism."
Curatorial social media algorithms, large language models, facial recognition, and deepfakes have emerged as powerful forces with far-reaching, and often unforeseen, implications on democratic processes and civil liberties. Pulitzer Center 2023 AI Accountability Fellows Srishti Jaswal and Niamh McIntyre will join Hafiz Malik and Margaret Talev to discuss examples of these technologies’ electoral influence. The conversation will be moderated by AI Accountability Fellow Jennifer Strong.
How are facial recognition tools being used to suppress dissent and detain activists? How has the proliferation of deepfakes—uncanny audio and visual reproductions of public figures that depict them in scenes that never occurred—impacted elections? How does propaganda travel in a politically polarized country like India, where high digital penetration and low digital literacy can lead to deadly consequences?
Panelists will discuss these questions and explore the need for ethical and regulatory frameworks at the rapidly evolving intersection of developing technologies, politics, and society. The conversation will be followed by an audience Q&A. Registration is required.
The panelists will include:
- Srishti Jaswal, a 2023 AI Accountability Fellow, is an award-winning independent journalist based in India. Supported by the Pulitzer Center, she traced The Journey of a Propaganda Message in Indian Elections.
- Hafiz Malik is a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. He has been working with deepfakes since 2015, and conducts research in the areas of automotive cybersecurity, deepfakes, sensor security, and multimedia forensics.
- Niamh McIntyre, a 2023 AI Accountability Fellow, is a data journalist and reporter on the Bureau of Investigative Journalism‘s Big Tech team. As a Fellow, McIntyre reported on Moscow's use of facial recognition tools to detain activists and the workers who trained the algorithms.
- Margaret Talev is the managing editor for politics at Axios and a CNN political analyst. She is also the Kramer director of Syracuse University’s Institute for Democracy, Journalism and Citizenship.
The discussion will be moderated by 2023 AI Accountability Fellow Jennifer Strong, an audio journalist covering the impact of AI on the way we live and work.
AI surveillance tools rely on low-paid workers to label and organize data.