New poll data of registered and potential voters reveals a general consensus that artificial intelligence could pose a threat to people as it further develops.
Artificial intelligence, or AI, is technology broadly used to complete tasks, learn information, and enable computers to perform tasks that typically require human intelligence. Recently, AI technology has become more sophisticated and more widely used at an increasing rate.
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In recent weeks we’ve seen multiple stories involving the two leading presidential candidates — Joe Biden and Donald Trump — signaling the rising dangers of Artificial Intelligence and related technology during an intense campaign. The examples run from alleged misinformation and video distortion to flat-out false imagery. The warnings are certainly apt.
Sure, AI has the potential for great benefits, whether in the healthcare field or even something like your GPS, but it also holds potential for terrible misuse in politics. Specifically, to get technical, it’s the so-called “generative AI” that can be directed to produce bogus human voices, imagery, text, and video. It can be used to create some of the worst “fake news.”
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Experts on artificial intelligence raised concerns about the implications of AI’s rapid growth at a panel discussion in Washington, D.C. Tuesday.
The American Enterprise Institute hosted a series of panel discussions surrounding the deployment of AI. Panelists discussed safety protocols, workforce development and regulatory initiatives.
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AI-powered image generators were back in the news earlier this year, this time for their propensity to create historically inaccurate and ethically questionable imagery. These recent missteps reinforced that, far from being the independent thinking machines of science fiction, AI models merely mimic what they’ve seen on the web, and the heavy hand of their creators artificially steers them toward certain kinds of representations. What can we learn from how OpenAI’s image generator created a series of images about Democratic and Republican causes and voters last December?
OpenAI’s ChatGPT 4 service, with its built-in image generator DALL-E, was asked to create an image representative of the Democratic Party (shown below). Asked to explain the image and its underlying details, ChatGPT explained that the scene is set in a “bustling urban environment [that] symbolizes progress and innovation . . . cities are often seen as hubs of cultural diversity and technological advancement, aligning with the Democratic Party’s focus on forward-thinking policies and modernization.” The image, ChatGPT continued, “features a diverse group of individuals of various ages, ethnicities, and genders. This diversity represents inclusivity and unity, key values of the Democratic Party,” along with the themes of “social justice, civil rights, and addressing climate change.”
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A series of Georgia Senate study committees will probe hot-button issues, ranging from safe firearm storage to preserving Georgia’s farmlands to artificial intelligence.
Lt. Governor Burt Jones appointed members to seven 2024 Senate Study Committees. The committees will make recommendations that could guide lawmakers’ actions during next year’s legislative session.
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Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes on Sunday joined a number of his counterparts from other states for a Meet the Press panel discussion, and the top state election official claimed that artificial intelligence (AI) will pose new “mis- and disinformation” threats during the 2024 elections.
Fontes told Meet the Press host Kristen Walker, “AI is not a new weapon. It’s an amplifier and a magnifier of mis- and disinformation,” and revealed that his office held a “tabletop exercise” that apparently involved both election officials and members of the media.
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Artificial intelligence (AI) and its integration within various sectors is moving at a speed that couldn’t have been imagined just a few years ago. As a result, the United States now stands on the brink of a new era of cybersecurity challenges. With AI technologies becoming increasingly sophisticated, the potential for their exploitation by malicious actors grows exponentially.
Because of this evolving threat, government agencies like the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), alongside private sector entities, must urgently work to harden America’s defenses to account for any soft spots that may be exploited. Failure to do so could have dire consequences on a multitude of levels, especially as we approach the upcoming U.S. presidential election, which is likely to be the first to contend with the profound implications of AI-driven cyber warfare.
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More than 3 in 4 Americans fear abuses of artificial intelligence will affect the 2024 presidential election, and many are not confident they can detect faked photos, videos or audio.
AI & Politics ’24, led by Lee Rainie and Jason Husser at Elon University, found 78 percent believe it is likely artificial intelligence will be abused to impact the outcome between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. There are 39 percent who believe artificial intelligence will hurt the election process, and just 5 percent believe it will help.
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The Ensuring Likeness Voice and Image Security (ELVIS) Act, which passed the Tennessee General Assembly and signed by Governor Bill Lee in March, is set to take effect on July 1.
As artificial intelligence (AI) has become more accessible to the general public, personalized generative AI cloning models and services have been used to enable human impersonation.
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A white Baltimore County Public Schools principal accused earlier this year of denigrating black students and Jewish families is now in the clear. After a months-long investigation, it was revealed that Pikesville High School Athletic Director Dazhon Darien, who’s black, had used an AI-generated voice of the principal, Eric Eiswert, making the (bogus) remarks. According to WBAL-11, law enforcement believes Darien made the recording in retaliation for Eiswert looking into his “potential mishandling” of school funds. In January when the recording hit the news and social media, Superintendent Myriam Rogers said it was “deeply disturbing” and added the district would “not tolerate disparaging remarks about any member of the Team BCPS community.” Rogers noted at the time the district could not “confirm the veracity” of the recording but was working to do so. Eiswert was temporarily suspended, and the school was subjected to numerous “many hate-filled messages.” Commenters on X, formerly Twitter, had demanded Eiswert’s dismissal. Posts said the principal “should’ve been let go on the spot,” “he better be gone soon,” and “no way any parent or teacher can have any confidence in him from here on out. He will resign or be canned.” However, at least one commenter was prescient.…
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Just when it appeared that skilled trades and vocational schools appeared to be on a permanent decline in the United States, members of Generation Z are beginning to embrace such professions in what may mark the beginning of a comeback.
According to Axios, the amount of enrollments in vocational programs has been gradually increasing as members of Gen Z, also known as “Zoomers,” are turning to trade schools as a cheaper alternative to the more expensive four-year universities.
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It’s not just college athletes’ name, image and likeness on the radar of the Ohio House of Representatives.
Normal Ohioans could receive protection from unauthorized use of their identities under a new bill that addresses the growing use of artificial intelligence.
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Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer wants a private contractor to use artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to optimize his office, according to an online advertisement seeking contractors.
The web listing, made on behalf of the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office, reveals Richer “is seeking a contractor to provide a solution to improve processes around document identification, data extraction, and comparing handwritten signature images with on-file signature images by way of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML).”
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Most conservatives are aware Big Tech is an insidious force in American life. Tech giants censor free speech, promote wokeness, and fund far-left groups. A number of Republicans at the federal level want to curtail the massive power Big Tech wields in our country.
However, at the state level, many Republicans are lining up to serve the interests of the tech giants. Big Tech knows that there’s little appetite at the federal level to do its bidding. So corporations like Microsoft are now lobbying state legislators to enact the AI regulations they want. It’s a campaign few Americans know about, but it could dramatically impact their lives.
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Vanderbilt University announced Monday it is establishing a new college dedicated to computer science, artificial intelligence (AI), data science, and related fields.
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The House Judiciary Committee has opened an inquiry to whether the IRS is using artificial intelligence to invade Americans’ financial privacy after an agency employee was captured in an undercover tape suggesting there was a widespread surveillance operation underway that might not be constitutional.
Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and Rep. Harriet Hageman, R-Wyo., sent a letter last week to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen demanding documents, and answers as to how the agency is currently employing artificial intelligence to comb through bank records to look for possible tax cheats.
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Joe Allen, author of Dark Aeon: Transhumanism and the War Against Humanity, said he believes the future of artificial intelligence (AI) will be “utterly miserable.”
Allen, on Tuesday’s episode of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show, explained how AI will most likely not evolve into a full-out “total doom human extinction” model nor into an “elaborate and spectacular” model that provides cures for diseases and invincible security, but instead evolve into something in between.
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Joe Allen, author of Dark Aeon: Transhumanism and the War Against Humanity, said transhumanism in artificial intelligence, commonly known as AI, is a war against the “very concept of the human.”
Allen, on Friday’s edition of The Tennessee Star Report, described transhumanism as a “quest to go beyond our current human state by way of science and technology – to transform the some portion of the human species and some versions of it or to transform the entire human species using everything from genetic engineering to artificial intelligence, a kind of symbiosis with artificial intelligence, a partnership, and, of course, using whatever means are available to connect the brain to artificial intelligence.”
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For the past couple of years, assessments of the national electric grid’s ability to deliver power during peak demand periods, such as heat waves and cold snaps, have shown increasing risk for blackouts.
The North American Electric Reliability Corporation, the nation’s grid watchdog, finds the main cause is retirements of coal plants without enough natural gas plants coming online.
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A bill was filed last week that could see “deepfake” audio and images, including those created using artificial intelligence (AI) technology, made a felony in Georgia if they are used in the context of an election.
Georgia State Senator John Albers (R-Alpharetta) filed SB 392, which, according to its summary, would make it a criminal offense to use deepfake technology to interfere with an election.
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Gov. Glenn Youngkin signed an executive order to implement artificial intelligence standards and guidelines he says will protect Virginians.
Executive Order 30 will implement AI educational guidelines for the classroom and policy and information technology standards. He says it will “safeguard the state’s databases while simultaneously protecting individual data” for Virginians.
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Gov. Bill Lee (R) announced this week that he is working with the General Assembly on a bill to protect the rights of Tennessee’s artists as artificial intelligence (AI) becomes a more prevalent threat.
“From Beale Street to Broadway, to Bristol and beyond, Tennessee is known for our rich artistic heritage that tells the story of our great state,” Lee said in a press release. “As the technology landscape evolves with artificial intelligence, we’re proud to lead the nation in proposing legal protection for our best-in-class artists and songwriters.”
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U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts is urging the cautious use of artificial intelligence, and he predicts it will “significantly” impact the legal field.
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From ancient Egypt to medieval England, cultivating one or more crops in the same field was common practice among many farmers for thousands of years. However, in the last century, food producers largely stopped ‘intercropping’ and moved towards an industrial type of agriculture – a shift that contributed to 34% of the world’s farmland being degraded today.
“Interest is growing in intercropping [again] because farmers increasingly understand it improves their soil health,” said Jerry Allford, an organic farmer and advisor from the Soil Association, a UK charity promoting sustainable agriculture. Jerry thinks this renewed focus can “open up a whole new way of farming” because it can bridge profitability with regenerative agriculture practices.
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The Senate could soon take up a bipartisan bill defining the liability protections enjoyed by artificial intelligence-generated content, which could lead to considerable impacts on online speech and the development of AI technology.
Republican Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley and Democratic Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal in June introduced the No Section 230 Immunity for AI Act, which would clarify that liability protections under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act do not apply to text and visual content created by artificial intelligence. Hawley may attempt to hold a vote on the bill in the coming weeks, his office told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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President Joe Biden’s administration has recently taken unprecedented action to exert influence over Americans’ digital lives, including broadband internet, net neutrality, social media and artificial intelligence (AI).
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A North Carolina child psychiatrist was sentenced to 40 years in prison followed by 30 years of supervised release after he was convicted of producing, transporting and possessing child pornography, at least some of which he generated through the use of artificial intelligence (AI).
David Tatum, 41, of Charlotte, will also be forced to pay around $100,000 or more in fines, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of North Carolina said last week.
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The Biden Administration recently announced the designation of 31 communities across the country as Regional Innovation and Technology Hubs (Tech Hubs) through the Department of Commerce Economic Development Administration, however, all five Tennessee regions that applied for the designation were not included.
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The IRS commissioner announced last month that the agency will now deploy artificial intelligence in pursuit of “wealthy tax cheats” who are using partnership structures to pay “little to no tax.” But the announcement’s logic doesn’t pass the smell test — the real intent seems to be to intimidate successful small businesspeople away from using legal tax minimization strategies.
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President Joe Biden’s administration unveiled a broad executive order on artificial intelligence (AI) on Monday, according to a fact sheet released by the White House.
The order covers areas such as safety, security, privacy, innovation and “advancing equity,” according to the fact sheet. It is the first ever AI executive order and follows the White House securing “voluntary commitments” from leading technology companies in July to address the risks posed by AI.
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The governor’s administration says the state should encourage the responsible use of artificial intelligence throughout its agencies, rather than turn a blind eye to its capabilities.
Thus, a new executive order was born, Gov. Josh Shapiro said, which represents “the most comprehensive” action taken at the state level to incorporate AI programs.
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Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti has joined a bipartisan coalition of attorneys general from 54 states and territories urging federal lawmakers to study and eventually propose legislation to protect children from being exploited through artificial intelligence (AI).
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A Georgia Senate joint committee will soon meet to discuss artificial intelligence.
“AI may be one of the greatest disruptors in history providing significant advancements and monumental risk,” State Sen. John Albers, R-Roswell (pictured above), chairman of the Senate Committee on Public Safety, said in a statement. “We must address this head on to protect our citizens, businesses, and state.”
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More than two-thirds of Americans are worried about the negative effects of artificial intelligence (AI), while 61 percent believe it could “threaten civilization,” according to a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll.
Whether or not AI will actually threaten the physical wellbeing of humans remains to be seen, but it’s already posing a number of other significant threats.
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Pope Francis is warning about the possible adverse effects of artificial intelligence and the need to monitor the technology in his message for World Day of Peace.
The cautionary message came Tuesday when the Vatican released the theme of the pope’s message for World Day of Peace, which is Sept. 21.
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Democratic Pennsylvania lawmakers are drafting several bills to enable regulation of artificial intelligence (AI), including one measure creating a new state agency to oversee the technology.
The new proposals build upon legislation Representative Chris Pielli (D-West Chester) announced last month that would mandate labeling of all AI-generated content. Other parts of the legislative package, which Pielli is cosponsoring alongside Representative Bob Merski (D-Erie), also includes a policy governing the commonwealth’s use of software and devices that perform tasks that were once possible only through human action.
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A Pennsylvania lawmaker wants all content generated by artificial intelligence (AI) to be labeled and is drafting legislation to that end.
State Representative Chris Pielli (D-West Chester) insisted consumers should expect to know whether they are accessing human-created or electronically produced information. He said people will have a harder time fulfilling this expectation as AI becomes more advanced and commonly used.
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Does artificial intelligence threaten to conquer humanity? In recent months, the question has leaped from the pages of science fiction novels to the forefront of media and government attention. It’s unclear, however, how many of the discussants understand the implication of that leap.
In the public mind, the threat either focuses narrowly on the inherent confusion of ever-better deep fakes and its consequences for the job market, or points in directions that would make a great movie: What if AI systems decide that they’re superior to humans, seize control, and put genocidal plans into practice? That latter focus is obviously the more compelling of the two.
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Tennessee U.S. Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN) questioned the Librarian of Congress during a recent hearing about content generated by artificial intelligence (AI), specifically copyrighted material of artists and songwriters.
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A new mechatronics lab at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC) opened to prepare its College of Engineering and computer science students for post-graduation careers.
UTC describes mechatronics as the “combination of mechanical engineering with electronics, electrical circuits, control mechanisms and software engineering.”
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Artificial intelligence will not spontaneously erupt into a superintelligence. Not soon, not ever. To understand the absurdity of A.I. becoming a “god,” we need only look at the possibility from the perspective of the A.I. itself.
Let’s start with a reflection on how humans, under God’s guidance, became intelligent in the first place. Over the course of millions of years, ancestors of humans bred in conditions that shaped physical and mental characteristics leading, generally, to the propagation of traits that helped humans survive and reproduce. We must assume, therefore, any A.I. created by man immediately would manifest anthropomorphic qualities that have proven useful for our species.
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Elon Musk told Fox News host Tucker Carlson Monday that it was “absolutely” possible for artificial intelligence to take control of civilization and make decisions for people.
“That’s real? It is conceivable that AI could take control and reach a point where you couldn’t turn it off and it would be making the decisions for people?” Carlson, a co-founder of the Daily Caller and Daily Caller News Foundation, asked Musk during an interview that aired Monday.
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by Mary Lou Masters Republicans and Democrats are entering an arms race to use Artificial Intelligence (AI) in upcoming 2024 campaigns to complete simple, daily tasks previously accomplished by droves of interns, according to The New York Times. Both parties are racing to develop AI technology to carry out basic functions like advertising, writing and sending out personalized campaign statements, predicting public opinion and analyzing voter behavior, the NYT reported. The use of AI in political campaigns comes with worry of disinformation as deep fakes continue to mount across the internet. “A.I. is about to make a significant change in the 2024 election because of machine learning’s predictive ability,” former President Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign manager and founder of a digital company that utilizes AI technology, Brad Parscale, told the NYT. Recent deep fake images of Trump being arrested in connection to the Manhattan District Attorney’s investigation into the former president’s alleged hush money payments to porn star actress Stormy Daniels have gone viral on social media. Deep fake photos of Pope Francis wearing a puffy white jacket have also made headwinds across the internet. “Unfortunately, I think people are going to figure out how to use this for evil faster than for improving civic life,” chief strategist…
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If we knew our existence would span millennia, would we be able to cherish each day or try as hard as we do now to leave something behind? Would voices from history still offer urgent advice, telling us we are part of something bigger or to make the most of our short lives so they matter? Would we still reach out to God for inspiration and guidance? If we didn’t have to die would we truly be alive?
When Homer composed the Iliad, it would have been ridiculous to think that someday mortal human beings would invent machines that might wield the power of the gods. But that’s where we’re headed. As economists struggle to imagine economic models that preserve vitality and growth in societies with crashing birth rates, and as individual competence is no longer required by institutions desperate to fill vacancies, artificial intelligence (AI) promises to fill the quantitative and qualitative human void.
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A recently leaked memo from Gen. Mike Minihan, the head of the U.S. Air Mobility Command (AMC), suggested that, within the next two years, the U.S. would be at war with China over Taiwan.
“I hope I am wrong,” wrote the four-star general, before adding that his gut feeling is that “we will fight in 2025.” The leaked memo comes at a time when, according to a recent article in The Economist, tensions between the U.S. and China are at an all-time high — a conclusion amply reinforced by recent headlines about the test of wills between the two nations over a Chinese spy balloon the Pentagon believes was overflying sensitive U.S. military sites.
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Big Tech giant Google on Monday announced Bard, the company’s new artificial intelligence product, in a bid to compete with ChatGPT.
“We’ve been working on an experimental conversational AI service, powered by LaMDA, that we’re calling Bard,” reads a blog post from the company. “And today, we’re taking another step forward by opening it up to trusted testers ahead of making it more widely available to the public in the coming weeks.
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Correspondence from Arizona’s Office of the Attorney General months before the November 2022 general election warned of issues with Maricopa County’s signature verification of mail-in ballots.
The first letter came from Attorney General Mark Brnovich on April 16, 2022, and was directed to Senate President Karen Fann as an interim report of the Maricopa County November 3, 2020, general election.
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In its final canvass report for the 2022 primary election, Maricopa County says it rejected 14 times more signatures than it did in the 2020 general election. This comes on the heels of Attorney General Mark Brnovich’s finding that the county’s standards for signature verification were “insufficient to guard against abuse.”
“Canvass Queen” Liz Harris, so named after conducting an 11-month long independent grassroots audit of the 2020 election in Maricopa County, told The Arizona Sun Times, “The entire voting system needs an entire overhaul. Period.”
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Maricopa County officials held a press conference and issued a response Wednesday to Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich’s first Interim Report on the 2020 Maricopa County independent ballot audit, prompting a sharp reaction from Brnovich. He said in a letter to supporters, “[T]he Maricopa County Board of Supervisors and County Recorder continue to throw stones at Attorney General Brnovich instead of working to address the serious issues identified in the interim report.” Jen Wright, head of his Elections Integrity Unit, who has lengthy experience investigating voter fraud for the Arizona Republican Party, sent a response back to their attorney with “serious concerns.”
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Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich issued an interim report this past week on his investigation of voter fraud during the 2020 presidential election in Arizona, which found “instances of election fraud by individuals who have been or will be prosecuted for various election crimes,” and a couple of days later he learned some more possibly troubling news. Attorneys for Maricopa County told him ballot tabulators used artificial intelligence to determine whether voters’ ballot affidavit signatures matched their signatures on file.
During an interview with former Trump advisor Steve Bannon on Bannon’s War Room show, Brnovich broke the news. “We got another letter from their lawyer for the first time — and this is not in the report — admitted they are using AI to verify signatures,” he said. “And so the whole signature verification process, is something that I think that, regardless of where you fall on the spectrum, it should be troubling and concerning that they are trying to verify hundreds of thousands of signatures so quickly. And of course that raises the question, how is that even humanly possible?”
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