Hillary Clinton, Election Officials Warn AI Could Threaten Elections

Hillary Clinton and U.S. election officials said they are concerned disinformation generated and spread by AI could threaten the 2024 presidential election [non-paywalled link]. WSJ: Clinton, a former secretary of state and 2016 presidential candidate, said she thinks foreign actors like Russian President Vladimir Putin could use AI to interfere in elections in the U.S. and elsewhere. Dozens of countries are running elections this year. 'Anybody who's not worried is not paying attention,' Clinton said Thursday at Columbia University, where election officials and tech executives discussed how AI could impact global elections.

She added: 'It could only be a very small handful of people in St. Petersburg or Moldova or wherever they are right now who are lighting the fire, but because of the algorithms everyone gets burned.' Clinton said Putin tried to undermine her before the 2016 election by spreading disinformation on Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat about 'all these terrible things' she purportedly did. 'I don't think any of us understood it,' she said. 'I did not understand it. I can tell you my campaign did not understand it. The so-called dark web was filled with these kinds of memes and stories and videos of all sorts portraying me in all kinds of less than flattering ways.' Clinton added: 'What they did to me was primitive and what we're talking about now is the leap in technology.'

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