Proactive Investors - OpenAI is gearing up to play a pivotal role in ensuring the integrity of the upcoming 2024 worldwide elections.
In a blog post Monday, the artificial intelligence firm stated its commitment to preventing abuse, enhancing transparency on AI-generated content, and facilitating access to accurate voting information.
“As we prepare for elections in 2024 across the world’s largest democracies, our approach is to continue our platform safety work by elevating accurate voting information, enforcing measured policies, and improving transparency,” the company wrote.
“We have a cross-functional effort dedicated to election work, bringing together expertise from our safety systems, threat intelligence, legal, engineering, and policy teams to quickly investigate and address potential abuse.”
Misinformation during elections is not new, with false and misleading claims being part of the electoral landscape throughout history. However, the events of 2016, where Russia utilized social media to interfere in the US presidential election, served as a wake-up call for both tech companies and the government, highlighting the capability of online platforms to magnify rumors, conspiracy theories, and falsehoods.
OpenAI said it is employing red teaming, user engagement for feedback, and safety mitigations to minimize potential harm. Notably, tools like DALL·E have guardrails to decline requests that involve the generation of images of real people, including candidates.
The company regularly refines usage policies, particularly for ChatGPT and the API, to align with evolving insights into technology usage and potential abuse. The policies explicitly restrict the development of applications for political campaigning and lobbying, the creation of chatbots impersonating real people or institutions, and applications that deter democratic participation.
OpenAI also said that it is experimenting with a provenance classifier for detecting DALL·E-generated images and plans to make it available to testers, including journalists, platforms, and researchers. Additionally, ChatGPT is integrating with real-time news reporting globally, enhancing transparency around information sources for users.
Finally, the organization is collaborating with the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) in the United States. ChatGPT will direct users to CanIVote.org, the authoritative source for US voting information, when asked procedural election-related questions.
According to the Brennan Center for Justice, false claims have eroded trust in elections and provoked a wave of anti-voter laws. The association noted that 64% of election officials reported in 2022 that “the spread of false information has made their jobs more dangerous.”
In May, Open AI CEO Sam Altman told a Senate Judiciary Committee that his “worst fears are that we…the technology industry, cause significant harm to the world.
“I think if this technology goes wrong, it can go quite wrong.”
The US election primaries kick off on Monday in Iowa.