The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - Can American Democracy Stare Down AI?

Episode Date: October 22, 2024

American politics hardly needed something new to rattle it. But the advent of artificial intelligence promises – or threatens – to do just that, in an already tumultuous election year. Cory Alpert is a founding partner of South and West, an American political consulting firm, and is now pursuing a PhD at the University of Melbourne, researching the implications of artificial intelligence for democracy. He talks to Steve Paikin about AI in U.S. politics today, and into the future.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

American politics hardly needed something new to rattle it, but the advent of artificial intelligence promises or maybe threatens to do just that in an already tumultuous election year. Corey Alpert is a founding partner of South and West, an American political consulting firm, and he is now pursuing a PhD at the University of Melbourne, researching the implications of artificial intelligence for democracy, and he joins us now here in our studio. It's great to meet you. Thanks for coming in. Likewise. Thanks for having me. I left out a bunch of stuff in the intro, which I'm going to add right now. For example, I mean, you're 29 years old.

Correct. But already, you worked on Pete Buttigieg's attempt to become the Democratic presidential nominee. You've worked for Kamala Harris. You were quote unquote, advanced lead in the White House in the Biden administration. So the first question is, what's an advanced lead? So the advanced team in the White House, we travel around the country and travel around the world helping set up events and public engagements for the president, the vice president

and their spouses. So from the beginning of the Biden administration until the end of December last year, I helped all four of those principals travel around and communicate the message of the Biden-Harris administration around the United States and around the world. So you know Kamala Harris pretty well. I've gotten to spend a lot of time around her and her team, absolutely.

The Kamala Harris that you deal with behind the scenes off camera and the Kamala Harris we see on the Hustings and on the Stephen Colbert show and on 60 Minutes and all of that, how different are those two people? I think they're pretty similar. Now that said, my engagement is really on the logistics end. But she's warm, she's funny, she'll always crack a joke with us behind the scenes, and she's really, really smart.

Her prosecutorial history comes out and it's really engaging and it keeps you on your toes in the best possible way. You know that she wants to make sure that the best information is out there. This is where I push back and say, yeah, but you know she went through staff like you know what through a goose the first couple of years and was reputed to have a terrible temper. So is she really the same person we see on the air compared to behind the scenes? So look, I did not spend a whole lot of time in closed rooms. I worked on a team that was sort of separated out

and helped support her as well as her husband, as well as the president and the first lady. But look, I think the beginning of the administration is tough for any new administration. And I think that a lot of the rumors and content about the vice president were tricky conversations and ones that are deeply rooted in an understanding of what a vice president is supposed to be.

And here, just to put a fine point on it, I think that a lot of the commentary was sexist and sort of misaligned to who she is as a person. Now that said, I think that the first, and having been there, I think the first about year and a half, I don't think the staff understood the leadership that she was trying to provide. And I think she also had a big learning curve. Being the vice president means you have a staff of several hundred, and it means you have conflicting priorities that are happening all over the country. And I think that there was a huge learning curve that it seems like in the last year or so

things have really improved But I think the first year so I think it was about equal measure Folks on the inside not really understanding how to communicate with one another. Let me get your view on this because The Democratic Party did something astonishing that I think nobody's ever seen happen before, which is, you know, the guy who's got the job made a pretty radical decision not to seek reelection. And rather than go through some primary process, they just installed the VEEP and that was it. Do you think something was missed?

Something that might have been helpful to the Democratic Party by not having a process by which to pick Joe Biden's presidential nomination successor. So yes, but to take one step back before then, there are some logistics here in that the Biden campaign, what was the Biden campaign, could only ever send the money in the logistical operation to Kamala Harris. So at a certain point, had the party gone with anyone other than Kamala Harris, that's hundreds of millions of dollars and a logistical return. And what you'd have to return?

Very likely. I'm not a lawyer, not an expert on the legal side of that. But no other candidate would be able to pick up that campaign apparatus in the way that Kamala Harris did. When she began her campaign, she began with hundreds of field offices across the country, No other candidate would be able to pick up that campaign apparatus in the way that Kamala Harris did. When she began her campaign, she began with hundreds of field offices across the country, a headquarter staff of hundreds. No other candidate would have been able to do that.

So there's a practicality to having her take over. There is. But to your question more specifically, I do think there's a huge value in having candidates articulate their case to the Democratic electorate. I voted for Joe Biden in the South Carolina primary, which was first in the nation this year. That said, in the condensed timeframe, I don't know that we would have gotten a lot, but I do think that we did lose out a bit on not having some kind of competitive system.

That said, I think that Kamala Harris had about the best campaign rollout anyone could ever have had in those first couple of days. And the question is, did you end up with the best possible candidate, though? I don't know that we're ever going to have an answer to that. I think that in 2020, we had an incredible process.

And I think a highlight of global democracy is the American primary system, where you had something like 24 candidates in 2019 and 2020 running with some level of viability. And I think it was about the healthiest thing for our democracy in the United States, to have that number of people articulating visions ranging from sort of the center right

all the way to the far left, and going in and retail politicking with voters. And I think it was great. And I do think that we miss out when we don't continue to do that. But in that condensed time frame and with an existential threat, the likes of Donald Trump is representing, that balance is quite tough.

And I don't know that I would have made a different decision. The one thing people ask me when I'm out there talking politics with people more than any other thing is, OK, she was vice president for 3 and 1 half years. Tell me one thing she accomplished. And OK, so I'll put that question on their behalf to you right now. You know, never mind that she's not Donald Trump.

That might be a good reason to vote for her. She's not Donald Trump. But what's she done on the positive side of the ledger that would give people confidence to say, okay, I think she can do this bigger job? Sure. So on the one hand, to temper that expectation, the vice president has no assigned responsibility in the constitution or law other than, I believe there's a law that assigns her to be

the chair of the National Space Council. Well, she's got to break ties in the Senate. Correct. So other than that, it's a blank slate. I think a lot of, you've seen her go out and do a lot on voting rights on the border. And I think that there's been, to be honest, some mixed results. And I think that she's been put in a tough position,

as every vice president is, of being the face of an administration without any real authority. That said, I think you've seen her lead on things like capping insulin prices for Americans to $35 a month. I think you've seen her lead on the fight on abortion rights. And I think she's been a key voice in bringing together coalitions. And I think most of what she's done as a leader is bringing together those coalitions like you've seen in the eight states that have passed abortion rights referendums. She's I think been a leader in building those coalitions in a way that only someone of a historic nature can do.

If there's one thing both the parties, the Republicans and the Democrats seem to have in common, it's that they both believe that if the other guy wins it's going to be an existential crisis for democracy. Do you think American voters see it that way? I don't think so. I don't think the average voter sees it that way. Now look, democracy is, I believe, the third most important issue in this election behind immigration and the economy in some order there. But that said, I think the hyperpartisans, probably myself among them, do see one candidate or the other as a kind of existential threat to American democracy.

I think the average American voter isn't as clued into that. They look and they see two very different futures for the country, but I don't think they see it necessarily as an existential threat one side or the other. Well, put it that way. I've always believed in, tell me I'm wrong, you know, I've been doing this a little while, but tell me I'm wrong. I've always believed most people, doesn't matter if you're here in the province of Ontario or the United States of America, are pretty moderate pragmatic people who hang around

the middle. And you've got a group of sort of smaller extremists on either end of the political continuum who watch a lot of cable TV and extremists on either end of the political continuum who watch a lot of cable TV and spend too much time on social media and make things crazy for the rest of us. Does that sort of align with what you think's going on? I think that's absolutely right. And I think that that's what you're

seeing in the campaign right now. You have both candidates trying to tack towards the middle. You're seeing Donald Trump soften his position sort of via JD Vance on abortion rights. You're seeing Kamala Harris change Modify and change some of her positions, especially on foreign policy and guns and guns I think that was a very clear example in that interview recently. So I think that's right I think the vast majority of the American electorate as within most Western countries is

somewhere in the middle. But I think they're easily swayed to either side based on the mood of the country. Right. Let's do some here. We got some numbers here. Yes, your country is polarized, but there does appear to be some common ground held on the issue of artificial intelligence. So here's the Pew Research Center.

In a survey from September of this year. Almost the same percentage of Republicans as Democrats say AI will be used mostly for bad during the 2024 presidential campaign. And similarly, more than half of those surveyed in both parties say they are extremely or very concerned about AI's influence on the election. Have we finally hit on a bipartisan issue here?

I think we have. But I think the thing that I'm always interested in polls like that is what do people mean by A.I.? This is a question that I get asked quite a lot and I think this is a question most people interested in the topic of A.I. get asked is what do we mean by A.I.? It's a huge swath of technology that can range from your Netflix suggestions all the way to things like the generative AI you see in ChatGPT.

But I do think it's right. And I agree with that percentage of Americans that I am nervous about the impact that AI is having, both in terms of its capacity to create misinformation. I think we've seen, I think the most famous example would be the AI generated images that Donald Trump made of Taylor Swift, which she even said directly caused her

to then endorse Kamala Harris. The thing I'm most interested in, and I think the thing that has the biggest impact in the US election and elections broadly around the world, are these algorithms that are putting very polarizing information in front of people and information that may or may not be true. And I think the impact of that right now is being felt especially

in the South in the United States where people are being fed all kinds of information about the hurricanes and that is going to end up costing people's lives when they don't evacuate or when they believe lies like this idea that somehow governments can control hurricanes, which just isn't true But it's it's driving this anger in this fear And I think that's the thing that worries me the most With those algorithms the thing I must confess I try to keep off a lot of this stuff because it's better for my mental health I don't spend 20 hours a day on that.

But if you're running for office and they are somehow so skilled at being able to create a clip of you saying something that you didn't say, but nobody who's looking at it knows that, I mean, that is just, the potential is rife for mischief there. What do we do about that?

So there are lots of questions on regulation here and I'll touch on that in a second. But I think this misinformation isn't so much a technical problem as a human problem. This problem of videos and images and text being false, that's not new. That's happened since the Romans, where a fake speech gets published

or fake audio comes out. In the age of radio, there were people who could impersonate politicians and go on the radio and broadcast something that someone never said. It's on steroids now though. It absolutely is on steroids. So both the distribution and its ability to be created. So we've lowered the bar for people to be able to create

this kind of misinformation and we've made it a lot easier for it to be distributed and for it to be shared quite frequently. But it's also, I think, there's a huge media literacy problem of you see videos of Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris saying things. And if you're reasonable followers of American politics, you know that's absolutely not something they would have said. The pope did not endorse Donald Trump for president?

Exactly. Which I read online? Absolutely. And I'm sure Donald Trump shared that on Twitter or X. But there's a huge media literacy problem that can help head that off. But absolutely the ability on both of the supply and the demand side for this misinformation is massive.

Metta says, the old Facebook people, they say, giving people the power to build community and bring the world closer together is their mission. Are they doing that? Yes and no. An interesting thing on Metta, they recently rebranded themselves, and I think Mark Zuckerberg said that they're now an AI company. They're no longer a social media company They are an AI company. I think in some ways they absolutely are the question is what what direction is that happening in? Certainly people are coming together on Facebook on Instagram and on whatsapp on all of their platforms. They're coming together

I think that is undeniably true The question is are they coming together? with a that is undeniably true. The question is, are they coming together with a basis of fact and with a basis of constructive political conversation? I think that answer is probably not. And I think we're seeing evidence of that continually. And I think we're going to see more of that as we get closer to this election.

Is that how most people experience artificial intelligence as it relates to this campaign? That's a great question. I think the way that most people are actually experiencing AI as it comes to this election or any election is through those algorithms. They go on Facebook, they go on X, they go on Instagram, and they're not seeing information that their friends have shared. They're seeing a sort of curated version of what an algorithm thinks that they should see. And I think that in itself is a really, really difficult position to be because I think that we haven't quite caught up with how that all works.

And it's a fundamentally alienating experience for people to go on these social media platforms and then not feel like they're in control of the information they're receiving and not know why they're receiving the information that they're getting and then their views are shifting because of that. I think that's how most people are experiencing this. Now that Elon Musk has gone full mega and he owns X, do we expect X to be sort of in the tank for Donald, I guess? We're already seeing that.

You're seeing a tenfold rise in right-wing content being shown to people on X. Elon recently had a new rule where even if you block someone, you're still going to see their posts. And I think largely that was because he is actually the most blocked person on X, and he wants to make sure everyone's still looking at what he's tweeting. I think absolutely that's happening on X.

That's happening on a lot of platforms where, but X in particular, where right-wing content and polarized content of all kinds continues to be the most popular and the most engaged with content. But X in particular, I think because of Elon, absolutely we're seeing them. You're pretty savvy on this stuff. Have you ever been faked out by a deep fake of artificial intelligence?

It's a great question. I don't think so. I think I'm pretty good. But that said, if I have, then it was pretty good. I spend a lot of my time thinking about and looking at these systems. And there are times where I have a then it was pretty good. I spend a lot of my time thinking about and looking at these systems. And there are times where I have a bit of a pause, and they're getting better and better.

So I don't think so, but maybe. Censorship, is that part of the solution? That's a great question. Love that long pause. We like long pauses here. It means the guests have to think. I think there's an element of, I'm hesitant to say censorship, but certainly of regulation.

I don't think that censorship works. I think that limiting the ways in which people express their views ultimately will always end up backfiring. And I think that's a core part of sort of an American political identity. We very much believe in freedom of speech. And I think that limiting, and I think what we've seen is limiting the ability for people to post or talk about the things that they want largely has an impact of driving them further back into those beliefs. Because especially right now, I think a lot of people,

if their post is censored, would go, oh, well, that only means that big tech is against me, or that there's some group of elites that don't want me to have this opinion. And I think that's an incredibly dangerous place to be. But you can't say fire in a crowded theater. There are limits on free speech. Correct, and I do think that there is smart regulation

that we need to think about, because right now, we still don't have a good regulatory regime around social media for things like dangerous speech. We're largely relying on the companies to do it themselves. And we're seeing that both on social media companies, but also on generative AI. You know, you saw Twitter, their generative AI model, Grok, has no guardrails around it, where places like ChatGPT

and OpenAI invested quite a lot of money in bringing in experts to put safety guardrails and understand how those tools can and should be used but there there are definitely nefarious actors and we're only relying on the companies to do it themselves rather than getting smart about how we create regulations and create safety guardrails to make sure that people unknowingly aren't consuming vast amounts of untrue information. Let's see if we can end this conversation on a reasonably upbeat note, if you think

it's merited. It might not be merited. I can imagine, maybe not today, but at some point a future where artificial intelligence combined with social media give users the power to really engage in direct democracy. I don't know if it's voting on bills or referenda or whatever it is but it's a much deeper and better and faster more immediate stake in their own democracy. Am I nuts to hope to hold out for the possibility of that? I don't think you're nuts to hold out that hope. And I think we saw a glimpse of this

in the period on social media before the algorithms were there. When these social media platforms really were social networks. It was a way for us to connect with our friends very quickly and very rapidly online. And then now, as we've been talking about, these algorithms have had downstream effects.

But one thing that I've been really excited about is this ability for new generations of people to come online and to organize and to build social movements that have been really optimistic and hopeful. You look at disaster responses where people are going online and they're connecting with their community and they're using these platforms to do really great things and right now, even in the political space,

they can use these platforms to organize their friends and to get their voices out there. I have a lot of hope that we can continue to do that. I think that requires, as we can continue to do that. I think that requires as we were talking about smart regulation and being able to protect users and citizens from the worst impacts of what these tech companies can do and what social media and AI can do more broadly. But I have a lot of hope that we can use these tools to organize and to communicate with our representatives and build deeper trust and deeper relationships.

But I think we're still at the very beginning of this new technology. And this isn't new. We had this exact conversation with the advent of radio. We had this exact conversation with the advent of television. We had this exact conversation in the 90s with the advent of the internet. With the beginnings of any new information technology, we're always going to have a period of time that's turbulent where we're wondering, is this the death of democracy?

And I don't think it is. I think that we're in a period where we have to grapple with what it means, where we have to grapple with the new ways in which people are communicating and how we do that. But I do think we'll get to the other side. And like with radio, radio brought us new ways of telling stories, new ways

of getting people invested in the stories that matter in their lives. TV, as we're seeing here, helps bring stories into people's lives in even more tangible ways. But at the beginning, people didn't necessarily think of it like that and I think that the same thing is happening with these social media Companies and how we interact online, but we have to continue to ask these questions It's an incredibly important role for the media It's an incredibly important role for regulatory watchdogs and for civil society

So continue asking these questions and to push us into that good direction because it's not guaranteed. But I have a lot of hope that we're going to get there. Amen. Corey, as I thank you for coming on the program, let me just add how disappointed I am that your South Carolinian accent did not come out, nor did your Melbourne Australian accent come out at all either.

So I think you're sounding a normal Canadian to me. It's an interesting accent. I grew up in rural South Carolina, and this accent was sort of the affectation of, there's a bit of a sad story, but the affectation was when I grew up, southern accents were seen as dumb. They were seen as stupid. Stephen Colbert, same story.

Exactly. He was another South Carolinian. And a lot of us, we were told by our teachers who had deep southern accents that we would never be taken seriously with that accent. And so I would actually watch the national news. I watched Tom Brokaw and would repeat how they said things. And that's what created this accent.

And I now wish I had at least a little bit more of that accent to be able to fall back on. Well, that's good to meet you all. Likewise. Corey Alpert, thanks so much. Thanks for having me.