In this special episode Elizabeth is joined by our panel of experts — Samantha Bradshaw, Wendy Chun, Suzie Dunn, Fenwick McKelvey and Wendy H. Wong —  for a roundtable discussion on how artificial intelligence is being deployed in Canadian political contexts. The topics range from mis- and disinformation, facial recognition, synthetic media, deep fakes and voice cloning to technical terms like GANs and large language models. We discuss the ways identities can be manipulated through AI, how generative AI creates content that dilutes our trust in images and media, and how AI relies on past data to make decisions about our future. We also look at potential solutions to all these challenges, including how to develop tools and techniques to detect disinformation, and questions around regulating AI while also enabling its use in creative expression.

This episode is packed with more resources than we can list below, so take a look through the annotated transcript for more links!

Additional resources: 

• The discussion focuses a lot on synthetic media — deep fakes, voice cloning, generative AI — and how AI is used to create fake images, videos or sound bites of politicians, as well as fake historical or political events. Some increasingly popular tools include Midjourney, Dall-E, Stable Diffusion and ChatGPT.
• Suzie brings up the challenge of regulating these uses of AI. Take a look at her paper Identity Manipulation: Responding to Advances in Artificial Intelligence and Robotics.
• Samantha talks about tools and techniques to detect AI-enabled dis-information, propaganda and manipulation. Take a look at this guide that she co-authored: Combating Information Manipulation: A Playbook for Elections and Beyond. 
• Wendy C. outlines some of the challenges related to the underlying data on which AI relies and the flawed ways that AI systems make sense of that data. For a deep dive, take a look at her book Discriminating Data: Correlation, Neighborhoods, and the New Politics of Recognition.
• Wendy W. asked the question: what does the public need to know to decide what kinds of automation or machine learning or AI we're comfortable with as a society? Here’s an op-ed she co-wrote for the Globe and Mail on this. And keep your eye out for her upcoming book: We, the Data: Human Rights in the Digital Age.
• Fenwick points out that people have promised computers would disrupt politics since the 1960, and part of the work is understanding which challenges are actually new. Check out his book about the history of programs that run in the background of our computers: Internet Daemons - Digital Communications Possessed. 

Check out www.polcommtech.ca for annotated transcripts of this episode in English and French.