Conference Agenda

As an overarching label for advanced machine learning technologies, “artificial intelligence” is widely cited as a new threat to information systems and public opinion, raising concerns over machine enabled deception, precision targeting, and manipulation in political discourses and election campaigns. As AI technologies become available for a wide variety of sociopolitical applications including deep fakes, this roundtable raises a pertinent question: Is the hype around AI distracting attention from pressing issues in disinformation and extreme speech? Bringing perspectives from ground realities and large language model (LLM)-based annotation experiments in Brazil, Ethiopia, India, Myanmar, South Africa and the USA, experts on this roundtable will discuss whether excessive focus on AI derails efforts to address disinformation in a holistic manner. The panelists will highlight human networks of disinformation, electoral governance, factchecking, and content moderation as four distinct areas that emphasize the need for a contextual understanding of hate and disinformation. Why do human networks of disinformation on WhatsApp, word of mouth, and other intrusive social media channels continue to be hugely influential, especially in global South contexts? How do recent controversies around campaign financing and gray digital influence operations stress the importance of electoral governance? How does professional and informal factchecking in these countries perceive AI as a new challenge while also grappling with the suspicion that it cannot be of much help in persuading people with factchecked content? How do AI-assisted systems of content moderation encounter the challenges of cultural context and linguistic diversity? Through these examples, the roundtable stresses for a people-centric perspective that can highlight the potential risks as well as identify the limitations of AI’s role in disinformation and extreme speech ecosystems. With close knowledge of different global contexts, the roundtable experts will debate whether concerns about AI and deepfakes in elections and political communication in general have been overstated.