We are fast heading into a world where we will be unable to distinguish fact from fiction. In the absence of knowable truth, we will just follow our chosen demagogues and vote for them no matter what. Leadership competence will certainly become more variable and inevitably decline in quality over time. Votes will still happen though, so democracy itself is not being threatened, but democracies addled by AI will likely lead to suboptimal outcomes
We've been unable to distinguish fact from fiction for a while. I'm not clear what difference deepfakes will make.
The fake here was not subtle. It was not trying to nudge people away from a position. It said baldly "This candidate is a criminal and nobody should even consider voting for them."
In a system with any decency, the opponent should say "That is categorically false and I condemn whoever made this fake. The election is about the legitimate differences between us, but my opponent is a good person. They'd be a good in the office. I would be better, and you should vote for me, but not because you've been fed lies."
Instead we've spent decades reducing every election to an existential crisis. At least in the US -- I can't speak to other countries. Differences in policy or managerial style are ignored in favor of "they are trying to destroy the country".
Which is aggravatingly self-fulfilling. Once you've decided that your opponents are enemies of the state, it justifies every response, including unethical or even illegal ones.
Deepfakes exacerbate that, but they seem like the inevitable consequence of a population who was carefully prepared to believe outright, transparent lies. You're right that AI will addle democracy further, but only because we were already addled.
There are much subtler ways to use deepfakes to persuade rather than harass. But it sounds like we'll never get to those, since people are perfectly willing to accept the crude ones.
Yes - I think we are complicit. We are too ready to join in the condemnation of 'the other' perhaps without fully realising that this debilitates the entire system of governance. I have some hope that we might just all 'level up' our skepticism toward all produced media - disbelieve everything basically - and become much harder to propagandise - but I don't think we will be able to resist the tribalism which seems inherently part of humanity. Suboptimal outcome
