>> c-span , powered by cable. >> do you solemnly swear that in the testimony you are about to get, it will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you got a gimmick >> saturday, watch american history tb congress investigates as we explore f thel

trade commission joining us now to talk about artificial intelligence and campaign 2024. good morning. let's start with the abundance institute. guest: the abundance institute is a new mission driven nonprofit to create the cultural >>en let us start with the abundant institute this is our explicit goal to a boat policy environment that allows emerging technologies, including a.i. to germinate, bloom and to flourish. we think that is the major road to widespread human prosperity and we are excited to tackle the big problems that we think are in the united states right now. >> so much so the director of policy specifically to that

part that reflects the concern they have >> a.i. has huge potential to create widespread human abundance. there is this new set of tools. a.i. has been around for a long time. you and i have talked about it in the past. this new set of generative a.i. creates a whole new set of tools that i think empowers individuals to really create new and powerful types of communications with each other. we think it is one of the big tools. as a.i. continues to be used throughout the economy, we think it will create a lot of opportunities for growth, economic growth but also personal growth and we are excited about it. >> before this job or at least you are that you at the federal commission with a position called chief technologist. what was that and how does it inform you do now? >> the federal trade commission is the general consumer protection and what of the competition agencies in the united states but the chief technologist job is to bring

understanding of technology to that policy space. i spent a lot of time looking at reports but also cases and investigations that the ftc was doing to bring that lens of technical expertise into the policy work that the federal trade commission was doing. >> before we go into the topic at hand, how is it funded and financially supported? >> the abundant institute has a wide range of foundation and corporate donors. we are very new. some of that is still being figured out. we just launched in april. that is the space that we live in. >> does that come from the community? >> i am not sure of all the details with what companies. a lot of the a.i. communities would be very interested in what we are doing. >> when it comes to the topic of the elections, your institute put out a series of reports forthcoming about the election. what is the concern over all or at least the things you are concerned about these reports?

>> almost as soon as chatgpt launch in october 2022, there was discussion about this technology might be used to impact elections. there is a lot of concern about the 2024 election it was not clear what was happening. there were some reports of some incidents that came about. we decided to launch an observatory, a tracker that would track all media mentions in the u.s. outlets of a.i. use in elections. we have been running about using keyword tool that tracks all of that. we launched in january about a year before the inauguration. and we have released our first periodic report last week. 180 days out from the election. out of the 7000 articles that are tractor identified, we spotted three incidents of uses

of a.i. in elections. some of those are interesting and we can talk more about what those instances are. the goal is to track all the way up and through the election so that after the election, you can have a very good ground truth. a database that says, what actually happened? a lot of the speculation is that a.i. will transform our elections. we have seen a lot of concerns from academia and politicians saying things like this is our last human election or that we need to get this under control or we won't have a democracy anymore. we want to get a good database that says, what kind of impact is this actually having right now? >> what do you think a.i. has the ability to undermine or sway an election? >> there is a couple different vectors.

what of them that i think people were early on very worried about was the used to hack election machines. it turns out that that vector from all the people that i have talked to is very unlikely. the election system -- the mechanics in the election system are very robust and distributed for it is a kind of tax service that is difficult to get around the a.i. does not change that much. the other way might change things would be around this information or misinformation. how much does it increase misinformation or disinformation in elections? i do not think that any watcher of news or observer of u.s. politics is unaware that there is a lot of misinformation and election communication already. people are generally quite skeptical of information. on the margins, it will increase the amount of speech because these tools do make it easier for people, individuals,

including individuals to create content. there is no reason to think the speech will be out of balance, more lies and truths. a.i. has a lot of potential to help people who have, who are marginalized communities who want to speak to politicians or politicians want to speak to them to connect them. things like automated translation. there is a lot of ways a.i. can help increase the robustness of democracy. there is ways to prevent. that is why we do this research but at the end of the election cycle, we will have a good set of data that says, what was the practical impact human >> this is neil chilson of the abundant institute but if you want to ask him questions concerning artificial intelligence and the upcoming election, you've got line 202- 748-8000 if you live in central time zone. you can also text us your thoughts at 202-748-8003 and

other things that came back from the report, the information you call together was a rebel call that took place before the new hampshire primary. set this call up for us. >> this was a call that went up between 5020 5000 people in new hampshir. it is not clear how they were target if it was democrats, republicans or some mix. this rebel call was the boys of joe biden saying, if you vote in today's primary, the republicans win or something like that. the implication it was trying to suppress voter turnout that call went out. hundred of thousands with -- boded in that election but they have investigated this and said there was no evidence that it suppress vote. republican primary that year, on the same day, had record turnout. the democrat one had a very average turnout for a year in

which the democratic candidate is running unopposed. it does not appear to have had a suppressive effects. in a weird twist, it was actually created by a democratic strategist. he says to promote the idea and the concern around a.i. it is an interesting case. >> here is the ad that took place just before the new hampshire primary. >> this is new hampshire presidential preference primary but republicans have been trying to push nonpartisan and democratic voters to produce a pay in their primary what a bunch of malarkey we know the value of voting democratic when our vote count. it is important that you save your vote for the november election. we will need your help in electing democrats up and down the ticket. voting this tuesday only enables the republicans in their quest to elect donald

trump again. your ball makes a difference in november, not this tuesday. if you would like to be removed from future calls, please press two now. >> that is the culprit as far as a call itself what did you think about the ability to reproduce the president about waking >> this technology is amazing. i think it is pretty incredible that we can use these techniques to take a small sample of somebody's voice and replicate it. it can be used to lie, right? there are concerns around that. i think the call itself, as we found out did not have a huge impact but it is something that voters should be aware of if they are getting unusual calls from people that sound like a certain person but they should pay attention and double check, especially with your local election officials about what is going on. >> let us take a call from mika. you are on with neil chilson of

the abundant institute. he is of the federal trade commission for joining us today to talk about the 2024 election and when it comes to election matters. mika, go ahead. mika, are you there? i think we're having a little transmission problem but we will try that call. mika, if you are on, keep going . we will get back to in a second. mr. chilson, when you found out about the video being part of the concerns of information, what other things did you find that came back from the search that you did? >> two of the other incidents were an incident where there had been a deep fake created of taylor swift that had her holding up a sign that said trump won, by the loss. one was a video was a picture. it turns out -- it appears that

especially the photo one could have been done with traditional editing tools. it is not clear at all that that was an a.i. created problem that was one of the incident that got reported as potentially an a.i. problem. the other one that we found in the period that we looked at was there was trump supporters who spread these a.i. generated photos of donald trump embracing african american women and showing support from the african american community. this one was a deep fake that was created by a.i.. there was a call in sugar in florida who admitted he had used the tools to make that those were the other ones with in the window. we did talk about another significant one that happened before we started the tracker. that was the use in a desantis add of some fakes pictures of trump and foutch eat together.

that did use an a.i. to and that was in the campaign ad. that was so far the only use of technology in and such and especially way. >> you have in the story from npr saying that during the at it was pictures of where the president appears to be coming -- hugging dr. fuaci. >> is up to the months other pictures that were real. >> exactly. you would think this would be the sort of thing that would be hard to notice. because these are high-profile candidates, obviously, there is a lot of scrutiny on the ads they put out. it was identified relatively quickly that this had fake images in it. the desantis campaign was run by a comms branch of the desantis campaign. obviously, the desantis campaign is no more. i'm not sure the strategy benefited them the way that

they hoped it would. it is another incident in the tracker of the 7500 media reports we saw, this is one of the three or four that pops up >> this is the bbc publishing the photo of the former present with african american supporters. this was deemed as false but the bbc picking that up as well. that is one of the conversations we will have when it comes to 2020 for an artificial intelligence but let us try mika again in north carolina. good morning. >> hi. i am currently studying artificial intelligence in college. there is major issues that i see that could of fact our political landscape. mostly, it is facts that are political beaters and uneducated on a.i. they have no idea how it operates or created. the data sets that are used for it. has your instant suit looked into trying to create training

programs for our congress so that they understand the concept of this technology better when they're making policies? i don't want another a.i. winter to happen as soon as i get my degree. >> i don't want that for you either. the call back to a.i. winter is interesting but a.i. has gone through several periods where there is tons of excitement and it dies often people think it is integrated to technology anyone thinks of it as a.i. anywhere. they think of it as computers. your point is really important. getting regulation right in this space is critical. to do that, you do not need to know everything about the technology but you need to know what i like to call the policy relevant characteristics of a.i. my institute has created some educational materials. we have largely use them at the state level for state legislators. a time of the action is happening. congress moves slower and has a

lot of competing our interest. we are making bows and roads with congress as well. they are also being talked about by people from industry and from adequacy groups -- advocacy groups. each with their own political angle. we do think it is important to get principled educational materials that will help make the right decisions around how to regulate in the space. >> eric is in california, antioch, california, hello. >> good morning, everyone. i was just wondering how -- it looks like the election will come down to five or six dates. could a i possibly tell you what individuals you have to concentrate on and be able to tell by algorithms how to influence those individuals as to make them vote the way you want? >> it is a great question.

political strategists have for decades at this point been selling tools that can help identify what our potential voters in a space that are persuadable. it turns out it is actually really hard to change people's minds. trying to figure out out how to that -- a.i. does not have an advantage on that. most of the techniques we use in targeted political advertising are statistical techniques that you could call them artificial intelligence because they use computers and algorithms but they are not what this new generative a.i. does not create a new set of tools for identifying people who are particularly persuadable . i do not know that is a big difference. a.i. does create a way to customize messages, the generative a.i. to customize messages maybe to the issues that the politician and the targeted voter -- the

intersection of what they most care about. maybe there are tools that help politicians or candidates reach people who they would not otherwise be able to connect with. i don't think the targeting tools have changed that much under this new wave of a generative a.i. >> how much background and technology do you have to have to use a i like the one we saw was biting ?, trained unita? >> mount katahdin. the person that created the biden robel call was actually a new orleans street performer that this democratic strategist had hired to do this. i don't think he had any formal technology training. a lot of these tools are point- and-click. they are powerful and interesting. i encourage the listeners to try out some of these tools and become familiar with what they can do and what they can do.

that familiarity with the tools will help people understand their limits and pay attention to what they are hearing and bring a skeptical eye to it. with some educated background. >> do you see a future where some type of transparency is needed when you look for an ad that needs to be divided someway? >> there is a lot of bills that are looking at that were in the political space, there are some bills that are actively looking at that but we have disclosures and political ads are ready for various things. as i mentioned before, once a.i. works, we don't call it a.i. anymore. your cell phones' camera has a algorithms dealt into it. if you take a video, does that count as an a.i. created ad? there is some definitional questions about what would count as a.i. the safe advice would be to say, if i am the lawyer for a

candidate i would say, put this disclosure in because we're not really sure. if you have that disclosure on every ad, it does not add anything. it does not add any information for the voter. there are trade-offs at the crowd that some of the important messages candidates might want to get out to the public. i think there are trade-offs in having force disclosures in that space. it is certainly something that congress is looking at. >> neil chilson, from this conversation. let us hear from dave in south carolina. hello, dave >> good morning, pedro. why is the basic deceit that is being practiced by a.i. purveyors, why is this deceit not prosecutable? this type of interference in our election and control of our government is unheard of. i do not understand why those that have this are allowed to

practice what they do. >> it is a really great point, dave. lying in a commercial context is already credible. if you lie about products or prices, it is criminal. in the political space, political speech is highly protected by the first amendment. myths truce -- it is also quite subjective. however, there are laws both at the state and federal level against mining about such things as when the election is if you use pen and paper or if you use some sophisticated a.i., if you live to people in order to suppress voters and the turnout by lightning about the process of the election, that is a crime. it can be prosecuted.

>> we have of your off of x asking this question but it seems that if china or russia decided to pull the trigger on a i west of the western world have no choice but to do the same. do you agree with that ? >> i'm not sure this is in the context of elections. i would guess it would be the ability to influence elections. >> in the elections, again, it is hard to know exactly how a.i. would be used. in many cases the goals of foreign adversaries and elections is not to determine a specific outcome. often it is to undermine the american trust in the electoral process. for that, you really don't need sophisticated techniques. the sketcher the technique look, the better they trigger somebody's alarm and say, it looks like something is going on sketchy in the selection. i do think this new generative a.i. does not really amped up the ability to undermine our

confidence in elections. if that is the goal of many of these third-party actors, i think a.i. does not change that too much. >> is there a way to measure how morris vizcaino generative a.i. is now versus when it first made the scene? these tests, lots of different things many different capabilities. obviously there is different for video or audio or text which are the three main areas in which we have generative a.i. . what we are saying is that the stuff is getting much better. chatgpt just launched a new version earlier this week and it is very impressive but it can do live translation between too people. it has a lot of potential for helping people out in their daily lives. it is much more powerful than three or five years ago.

>> chris and illinois for our guest. good morning, you were on. >> good morning. i have a question and a comment. the comment is regarding one of the guest's statements earlier in the broadcast when he said that the tool has the capability to increase speech. i was just wondering if you could comment a little bit on what he meant by that. the other question with regards to regulation, we already know that technology typically leads everything. things like regulation follow at a very slow pace behind the actual speed of technology. things like the example where this guy that is not very technical, you know, did a great ad. what happens when real professionals do it to? especially in the campaign space? what kind of things can go

wrong? >> great set of questions. i think those are quite related. when i was talking about increasing speech, what i meant is that it empowers people who do not have sophisticated studios or cameras or editing software to generate something that is persuasive and compelling and professional looking. in that way it is a level center. i do think that what that means is that people whose voices have been more marginalized or upstart candidates who are trying to take on a big and comment, it levels the playing field a little bit between those two. that is what i meant by increase speech. if you look at how the tools are used right now, especially the image ones, just the explosion of rich and interesting images, i think, is an example of how much these

tools can increase the ability of someone to express themselves. i think that holds true in the political space as well. i expect to see a lot of content around politics where people are using these tools to speak. that is sort of scary if you are sitting at the top and you're saying, i don't know about all these people having these new powerful tools. that might be a threat to those of us who are already sophisticated in our tools and techniques. ultimately, it is a good thing for democracy because that is what we want. we want them to express themselves. as to your second part, again, i think this is more of a little -- levels that are that it is for a level up for people who have sophisticated tools. that is what we have seen in the job space. what we are learning from generative a.i. is that it is helping people who are new to jobs or inexperienced very quickly move up the learning curve to become people who are much more -- there putting out work products

in a much shorter time. even if they are not reaching the peaks of the top performers in a company immediately. it does seem to be a level setting process. i think that probably holds true in the political speech space as well. >> 202-748-2000. love you were talked about legislation efforts in congress. there is a story today that senator schumer is going to unveil what is being described as a road map when it comes to looking at a.i. and the story highlights the fact that it is not legislation but intended to prove senate committees crafted bills attacking the technology. we are to be asked about what they should contain a look at and what would you say? >> this is a combination of senator schumer has been having a series of hearings on the hill and closed-door sessions. we have lots of people from

industry and lots of other places to talk about the technology and the issues. i think in this road map, i am sure it is in there but one of the most important pieces is how does government uses technology? not just how they use it in criminal justice or overall administration of government but how do they make sure that the government and the military are taking advantage of this technology in a way that is safe and respects the rights of citizens and that actually increases the capability of government to deliver on what is supposed to do for the american citizen? that is something that should be low hanging fruit for government. it does not require pushing a lot of mandates of the technology externally but it does require direction from congress and from the executive branch about what agencies should be doing and thinking about as they are evaluating whether or not to use these tools. >> i suppose there is a sweet spot of regulation and it comes

to evaluating what it does and not putting a chill on the industry overall. >> when it comes to a.i. because it is a general-purpose technology, like electricity, it is important to look at the sectors in which it is being used. for example, using a.i. in healthcare. one of the places where it has enormous potential to deliver customized drugs and treatments based on your specific health needs. we arty have a pretty robust regulatory regime there. how does a.i. fit into that? how does it fit into the robust regime and regulate as is being used in healthcare or as it is being used in transportation or being used in telecommunications. rather than trying to regulate a i generally, which would be like saying let us regulate computers generally. it is a very difficult task and probably won't achieve the efforts of the goals we are trying. >> has the abundance is it been a part of these discussions?

>> the hearings i think were pretty abundant, as i said. a lot of our partners and people that we work with have participated in those. as i think this road map rolls out and as congressional committees start to investigate, we will certainly be active in educating legislators on the right pathways. >> senecal bashar is set to have a hearing today as well. more interesting coming from congress, especially in this space. >> senecal bashar is due on wednesday to enter suess -- introduce, i had testified before her and the previous run on this. i am skeptical of the function of these bills for some the reasons we talked about. for transparency and i think it is overbroad in that it tackles not just -- that when tackles

political ads but the other one would ban the use of deep faker a.i. generated technology. it has a challenge of defining a.i. does that include my camera? it has another challenge is that it is broader than political ads. it might include any political speech. if you treat your a.i. generated picture of donald trump, that might fall under this particular law. i think that raises a bunch of questions given political speech is so important and protected by the first amendment in this country >> let us hear from raul in california. thanks for waiting. >> you are welcome. i just want to say i think a.i. during this time right before an election is very, very dangerous. what are we going to do if president trump or former trump decides that a i cheated him of a presidency? he already almost tore down the

white house ones. what can happen next time and who would be responsible for that? >> i share your concern. in this sense. it is less what a.i. -- our studies show that a.i. has not had enormous impact but that could change and that is why we are monitoring this. we hope at the end to look back and say, whether or not a.i. had impacts on various races. that would directly address the challenge. second, i do worry that there is a segment of the american population that is already quite skeptical of the robustness of our electoral process. i do worry but if we talk about over and over about the threat a.i. has here. as i said, our tracker picked up 7500 articles for what were three incidences

that did not have impact on the elections. that type of hype and concern could lead people to be skeptical afterwards of the electoral outcome but i do worry about that. i think it is important for us as media consumers and the media producers out there to be thoughtful and how they talk about the use of a.i. in electoral politics. in particular, not jumping to conclusions that something was a.i. generated. when many of the video and picture editing tools we have right now are plenty powerful enough without a.i. to create some sort of suspicious photo or video. not jumping to a.i. to blame. also, following the story through, not just its initial release or identifying of an incident but what impact it actually has on voters. those two things could go a long way towards having people be realistic about what impact

a i might have. it won't stop politicians who have outcomes that did not go in their favor from blaming x, y and z, for the reason it did not go in their favor. it will help voters moderate their own concernsand look at the world through more realistic eyes about what is going on. >> someone bounces off that you can elaborate. this is a viewer in mexico. it seems attention seeking driven a.i. programs early harding people political position. to the ecology changes but political value stay. >> that is interesting but when we talk about a.i., we are especially in congress early on. continuing when we talk about a.i. and speech, we really blend them in with social media context we are in. a lot of the problem people are saying are a.i. problems are kind of the same problems that people have been

concerned about around social media, primarily. this is a new way to create content. the only way that content like that has an impact is if it is distributed widely. that is a social media or traditional media function. i do think we need to separate those two things out. is it a.i. that is causing the problem or the distribution? the concern that we have had around distribution of content in different ways that might be the proper place to focus attention? >> would you say platforms have to take more responsibility? if that is the case, how does that happen? how do you keep watch over that ? >> it depends on how you identify the problem. i think platforms have a responsibility to create an environment that their users want to participate in. they do that in lots of different ways through content moderation. to my mind, that means i need a robust discussion on the

platform. people arguing that the best way to deal with -wise is really to bend them or to suppress them but to open them to sunlight and discussion with social media platforms are great place for people to disagree if you spend time on them. some of the platforms have interesting things like x.com notes where you have a robust discussion about the content of a tweet and push back on something that you think is faults. those types of tools, i hope they continue to evolve. i think social media companies should look at how they can help the bottom up discussion happen without trying to suppress the actual publication of content. >> this is part one of your report. what are the other parts dealing with? >> there will be updates over time. we will issue them at 90/60/30 and we will do a postmortem, it

is many days before the election and we will do postmortem after the election. we will continue the same process. we are iterating a bit because as the discussion around the politics ramps up, volume will as well. we will continue to tweak our algorithm a little. the ultimate goal is to identify all the situations in which a.i. was used in u.s. elections and build a database that people can look back and say, i know about this incident and what happened here is evidence about what effect it had or did not happen where can people find these reports? >> they are available on our website. it is abundance.institute. you can go there and check it out. and also learn a little more about the abundance institute >> neil chilson serves as the director for the a.i. policy for the abundance institute. thank you for your time. we're joined now by the national chair of the college republican national committee,

courtney. welcome to the program. >> thank you. >> tell us about the college republican national committee. what is about and the mission command >> it is 8092 by a group of college students in michigan. since then we have grown to all 50 states plus puerto rico and guam. we have chapters on college campuses. our mission is to get republicans hope at all levels the maga republican party on campus. >> are you affiliated with the republican national committee? >> we are recognized by them as the official collegiate arm of the republican party. we are not financially supported by then and we do not pay due to them either. how are you financially supported? >> 100% supported by donors. we do not charge any dues to our members. we know how hard it is to be a college student. we are famously broke. we do not require that our chapters pay any money to us. we are 100% per started