What the Past Can Teach Us About Our AI Fears
Public discourse around the effect of artificial intelligence on misinformation and disinformation seems to have grown after the World Economic Forum labeled artificial intelligence (AI) the greatest short-term risk in 2024. But the sudden rise of AI is not the first time we’ve seen concerns about the potential impact of manipulated media.
This election season has seen both policymakers and the press express concerns about how AI might lead to misinformation and disinformation impacting elections. Yet history has shown us that when people fear that a new technology will cause the public to be unable to decipher truth from fiction, often the monsters turn out to be just trees.
AI isn’t the first time we’ve faced fears about manipulated media in the political context. As American Action Forum’s Jeffrey Westling noted in 2020 regarding the potential concerns around deepfakes, “history is littered with deceptive practices—from Hannibal’s fake war camp to Will Rogers’ too-real impersonation of President [Henry] Truman to [Joseph] Stalin’s disappearing of enemies from photographs.”
In fact, in the 1910s, concerns about the potential “misinformation” in faked photos led to calls to ban the (literal) “photoshops,” which sound incredibly like calls to regulate or ban AI tools today. Fortunately, Congress did not ban these prior technologies because they could be used or abused in misleading ways, and we saw plenty of beneficial impacts for expression from the same tools.
While some manipulated media may create uncertainty or discomfort, just as it has in the past, regulation of AI in the political context could create free speech issues. Vague definitions around artificial intelligence or what type of content is covered may outlaw tools of political discourse if they include references to political figures or the election, including funny memes or Saturday Night Live skits that use AI technology in benign or beneficial ways—such as audio or visual editing tools or auto-translation.
As a result, legitimate, protected forms of speech, including political commentary such as parody, could be silenced by burdensome regulation. Rules around AI use in elections could also prevent AI services from providing factual information about
Article from Reason.com
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