Is the rise of AI making politics a more dangerously polarised game? Is it even fair or ethical to allow these technologies to impact media? And will the integrity of future election campaigns be doomed? Myesha Jemison is hosted by Anthony Nkyi for a conversation on the holistic impact of the rising presence of artificial intelligence in the political sphere and on the electorate. They discuss how AI has accentuated political bias, its increased influence in social media and internet communication, how traditional media outlets are coping with misinformation, the problem of information disorder, when malicious AI use crosses the lines of free speech, the overall positives, and how to disarm its negative impacts.

Myesha Jemison is a PhD student at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, a Graduate Student Fellow at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence at the Institute for Technology and Humanity and a member of Trinity College, Cambridge. Her PhD research looks at how Cambridge Analytica, including its parent company Strategic Communications Laboratories Group (SCL Group) and its research arm, the Behavioural Dynamics (BDi), built scientific credibility without achieving transparency into their science and methodologies. Her dissertation also investigates how young democracies in Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa built credibility in their electoral systems.

Articles discussed in this episode:

• AI Poses Risks to Both Authoritarian and Democratic Politics: https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/ai-poses-risks-both-authoritarian-and-democratic-politics
• Rise of the AI psychbots: https://www.politico.com/newsletters/digital-future-daily/2024/01/02/rise-of-the-ai-psychbots-00133487
• An Ethiopian professor was murdered by a mob. A lawsuit alleges Facebook fueled the violence: https://edition.cnn.com/2022/12/14/tech/ethiopia-murdered-professor-lawsuit-meta-kenya-intl/index.html

• 
  

Welcome to our first episode of Season 2 of Reinforcement Talking, UCL AI Society's Podcast!

This episode is an audio version of our recent AI Debate. It's difficult to think of a question with higher stakes. Some AI experts like Geoffrey Hinton think that AI should be considered just as risky as pandemics or nuclear war; others, like Melanie Mitchell, see the risks as vanishingly small.

It was a pleasure to host 4 experts on this topic, including

• Reuben Adams, a UCL AI PhD student
• Chris Watkins, Professor in Computer Science at Royal Holloway
• Jack Stilgoe, a Science Technology Professor at UCL
• Kenneth Cukier, Deputy Executive Editor at The Economist.

If you'd prefer to watch the YouTube version, here's the link.⁠