In today's episode, I am joined by Amirah Mitchell, who has been interested in artificial intelligence for a while and has been working with the technology, trying to understand the various ways in which it can be a helpful tool for us. In our discussion, we talk about social media and how AI is already being used to hyper-target our feeds with videos and posts that will keep us engaged, how AI is already being used and could be used in the medical field as a societal benefit, and how this tool may try to change our politics little by little.

News articles of the week:

HuffPost:

CyberScoop:

Associated Press:

On today's episode, we break down the story of how social media and big data became integral parts of elections in the United States and how candidates that successfully took advantage of these new tools were able to make strategic gains over their opponents in battleground states. The Obama campaign in 2012 set the standard for how candidates should focus on engaging with voters via social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Data analytics also played a major role in the 2012 Obama campaign's strategy for winning votes, using new databases and techniques to learn about voter preferences that could not be accessed by traditional means. In this episode, we learn that AI tools will likely be used to enhance these techniques, and the risks that are involved require effective government guardrails and regulations that need to be implemented ASAP.

News Article Links:

New York Times

The Hill

CNN

Fortune

SkyNews

Reuters

Research Papers:

Dalton-Hoffman (2012)

Hong and Nadler (2012)

Pew Research Center (2021)

Nickerson and Rogers (2014)

Zhang Yan et al (2018) (Research Article)

Hi everybody! This is the first episode of my new podcast: The Cybercampaign. With the 2024 election cycle already beginning, I think it is critical that we try to understand the various ways that AI is being used as a tool for campaigning and fundraising. In today's episode, I talk about some of the recent news regarding AI and how it has already been changing the way that we understand elections in this country. I then talk about some of the important terms that we will being coming across often, especially once we begin interviewing people who have a lot more experience and knowledge about this field. We end the episode by bringing up a lot of the topic ideas for future episodes that I have, and I ask that all of you send me some of your thoughts and ideas regarding AI and the upcoming election. What concerns do you have? How do you think it will be used in a positive way? Are you someone who uses AI on a daily basis or for your work?

Here's the invite link for the Discord server, where we can talk more about the episodes and all of the different questions and such that you all have: https://discord.gg/4eaPwhyk

Music credit: Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio