A large population of Americans lacks confidence in the capability of AI to offer accurate information on elections. This combined with the increased worry about fake news impacts a large number of respondents about the increased use of AI in politics.
In a recent survey, it was found that more than 50% of Americans have no faith in using AI for election data.
Majority of Americans Don't Trust AI for Election Data
A recent poll says that most Americans are not yet convinced of AI when it comes to election information. The majority still has trust issues with it.Unsplash
With AI misinformation being a controversial matter during the US election, the Senate Committee passed three bills to combat this problem. It appears that it's been an alarming issue for most US residents.
A recent survey that was carried out involving The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and USAFacts showed that approximately 64 percent of the nation's population believe they cannot fully rely on AI-produced election information.
Consequently, 64% of the participants claimed they have low levels of trust in the election-related information produced by AI chatbots. This shows that a good percentage of people feel uncomfortable relying on AI when it comes to political data that is factual.
More than a third - 43% of respondents said that AI will make it difficult to access accurate information on the upcoming presidential election. This has further raised a concern that as AI integration becomes prominent in information sharing platforms it may lead to an aspect of making the whole process of accessing credible and verifiable information even more difficult.
On the other hand, only one in six of the respondents declared that AI would reduce the difficulty of getting reliable election info implying that there was widespread pessimism about the current potential of the technology.
How AI Chatbots Work
AI chatbots work with large language models (LLMs) that convey chats by conversational instruction given by the user. People can ask questions and receive answers from the AI where the latter basically recontextualizes and reformulates significant amounts of data that existed prior to the given interaction.
But while these models can sample from large data, they cannot comprehend or think as per human brain functioning, according to FoxNews. They can only respond to questions based on the data to which they have been exposed and therefore the probability of factual mistakes is always high.
Moreover, AI chatbots have the potential to become instruments that help spread fake news and misinformation by their handlers. This factor has amplified people's concern about the use of AI to spread content that is related to the elections.
Exploding Fear Concerning Artificial Intelligence and Misinformation
Another question asked in the survey was if AI could potentially jeopardize people's possibility to obtain accurate information; 52% of the participants of the survey are worried that besides hindering their ability to get accurate election information, AI might erode the very idea of objectivity and truth.
However, only 9% of the respondents showed enthusiasm about AI's advancement in the information-sharing networks and only the same percentage showed enthusiasm about AI's advancement in the information-sharing networks as did about its negative impact on the political processes.
Computer-Generated Images of Political Personalities
One of the problems that worry people is the advancement in the AI systems in producing fakes of people in society, especially politicians. With the aid of AI, images of the current and past presidents of the United States such as former President Donald Trump, and incumbent President Joe Biden have been an agenda on major social media platforms.
This technology as much as it is impressive, brings forth concerns as to the use of manipulated media which seems to be on the rise during election seasons.
With even more developing advancements in computer artificial intelligence, the public has not wavered from being skeptical of its veracious content and election news information. The poll reveals that more efforts should be made to prevent AI from becoming a source of the problem with finding a reliable source of political data.
This survey was done by the AP-NORC between July 29 and Aug. 8, to a sample of 1,158 Americans with an error margin of +/ - 4%. Whenever AI is closely associated with the information-sharing process this idea will remain a focus of the debate on technology and democracy.
