Does Artificial Intelligence Make Democracy Impossible?

When it comes to war, everybody lies, atrocity propaganda going beyond just run of the mill fog of war. Originally attributed to Carl von Clausewitz fog of war was used to describe the uncertainty, confusion, and chaos that invariably occurs during wars and signifies the difficulty of obtaining accurate information in the midst of a military conflagration. And the conflagration in Gaza is the worst yet.

The AP reported yesterday that Netanyahu has informed the U.S. that he opposes an Palestinian state; period. “‘In any future arrangement… Israel needs security control all territory west of the Jordan,’ Netanyahu told a nationally broadcast news conference. ‘This collides with the idea of sovereignty. What can you do?’” When I was studying sociology in college, Hannah Arendt was considered one of the greatest living political philosophers whose work covered the nature of power, totalitarianism, authority. We read 2 of her books, The Human Condition, where she explores the concept of public and private realms, and Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, which discusses the trial of Adolf Eichmann. After I graduated, I read On Violence, an examination of political violence. Last week, the [Jewish Daily] Forward ran an essay by Robert Zaretsky, In her search for truth, Hannah Arendt would have recognized the lies of Netanyahu, Putin and Trump.

“As Israel continues its brutal and futile effort to destroy Hamas— an effort that has killed more than 22,000 Palestinians— the world finds itself even more deeply lodged in this gap,” wrote Zaretsky. “If Arendt were alive today, she would most likely find herself returning to her key concern in the book [Between Past and Future]: the frailty of truth in an age of when politicians lie as naturally as they breathe… which brings us back to our own age of totalitarian-curious ideologies, driven by ethno-nationalism or faith-driven populism, that represent as great a threat to the existence of factual truth as did the older ideologies of Nazi and Soviet totalitarianism. What is at stake is more than a politician’s occasional or tactical falsehood. Instead, observed Arendt, the great danger occurs when an entire community or party embarks upon ‘organized lying on principle, and not only in respect to particulars.’”

We see this phenomenon both in the United States of Donald Trump and the Russia of Vladimir Putin. But we also see it in the Israel of Benjamin Netanyahu, a politician who has always had an adversarial relationship to factual truth. Many of his lies were, and remain, self-serving, employed to propel and maintain him in power. These falsehoods, frequent and familiar, range from his 2015 claim that the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem persuaded Hitler to eradicate European Jewry to his 2021 claim that the police and attorney general had “stitched together cases” in a conspiratorial putsch to remove him from office.

But after the Hamas massacre of more than 1,200 Israelis on Oct. 7, most Israelis have now come to see even Netanyahu’s repeated vow that, under his leadership, Israel would never again be surprised by a terrorist attack as just another in a series of lies: “This is what the state of Israel expects of me, and this is what I will do,” Netanyahu has said.

Of course, the state of Israel now expects Netanyahu to resign in disgrace. But his refusal to do so has fueled a more sweeping and menacing lie, one wielded by the Kahanist bloc to which Netanyahu clings for political survival. They are now exploiting the massacre of Israelis as well as driving the massacre of Palestinians to enact their supremacist and annexationist deceits about the “historical” basis for a Greater Israel. (That they believe these lies are true, Arendt would remind us, does not make them true.)

Most horrifically, there is the lie, embraced by countless Jews whose own past has been seared by pogroms and genocides, that the Palestinians must either pay for Hamas’ crime or that they are human animals who deserve no better. Or, hardly better, the lie many others live when they desperately try not to exercise their thought.

In her book, Arendt cites the old Latin adage Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus: “Let justice be done though the world may perish.” But is it true, she asks, that a world without justice would be a world in which we cannot live? After all, the imperative of existence trumps not just justice, but every other value or ideal. Except one, that is: truth. As she writes, “No permanence, no perseverance in existence, can even be conceived of without men willing to testify to what is and appears to them because it is.” This remains the task of all those who refuse to avert their eyes from the horrifying plight of the Palestinians and the harrowing lies of Israel’s government.

Reporting for NBC News yesterday, Brandy Zadrozny wrote that “Disinformation poses an unprecedented threat to democracy in the United States in 2024, according to researchers, technologists and political scientists. As the presidential election approaches, experts warn that a convergence of events at home and abroad, on traditional and social media— and amid an environment of rising authoritarianism, deep distrust, and political and social unrest— makes the dangers from propaganda, falsehoods and conspiracy theories more dire than ever. The U.S. presidential election comes during a historic year, with billions of people voting in other elections in more than 50 countries, including in Europe, India, Mexico and South Africa. And it comes at a time of ideal circumstances for disinformation and the people who spread it. An increasing number of voters have proven susceptible to disinformation from former President Donald Trump and his allies; artificial intelligence technology is ubiquitous; social media companies have slashed efforts to rein in misinformation on their platforms; and attacks on the work and reputation of academics tracking disinformation have chilled research.”

Scammers have found success with so-called deepfakes, mostly in manufacturing AI-generated videos of celebrities hawking products like health supplements or cryptocurrency. Even as campaigns begin to use AI in ads and states rush to legislate around them, the much-publicized threat of the technology to elections has yet to materialize. More often, cheap AI is being used to create propaganda, mostly from Trump loyalists.

Content that uses synthetic media from self-described “meme teams,” who serve as volunteers, according to the Trump campaign, is already being shared by Trump on his social media platform, Truth Social. These memes malign other candidates and their spouses, attorneys and judges involved in prosecuting Trump, journalists, and state politicians and election officials deemed enemies of the Trump camp.

“Granted it’s hokey and not believable in any way, shape or form, but it’s only a matter of time until something works,” said Ben Decker, the chief executive of Memetica, a digital investigations company. “The disinformation narratives, the meme wars, they’re back. That content is going to overpopulate certain parts of the public square.” 

The effect on the wider world is clear, Decker said: “Harassment of public officials, members of the media and civil society groups is going to run rampant.”

A potential greater threat lies in generative AI tools’ ability to personalize misinformation, making it harder for social media platforms to moderate because it appears authentic, said Laura Edelson, an assistant professor at Northeastern University and co-leader of Cybersecurity for Democracy, who studies political misinformation.

“It’s going to be a lot harder this cycle as people are washing misinformation through generative AI tools,” Edelson said. “Misinformation will be more effective inside insular communities and harder to detect. Platforms need to be building new tools.”

Instead, Edelson and others say, platforms are cutting the teams tasked with moderation to the bone. Since 2021, the largest social media companies have reportedly deprioritized efforts to guard against viral falsehoods, tech critics said. 

Elon Musk’s X has led the way as social media platforms including Meta and YouTube have retreated from enforcement and policy and slashed content moderators and trust and safety teams, said Rose Lang-Maso, campaign manager at Free Press, a digital civil rights organization. 

“Without policies in place that moderate for content and without enough content moderators to actually do the moderating, it makes it more possible for bad actors to increase abuse online and offline,” Lang-Maso said. “Platforms are really abdicating the responsibility to users.”

Meta, YouTube and X have denied reports that they are ill-prepared to prevent the spread of election disinformation.

“Content misleading voters on how to vote or encouraging interference in the democratic process is prohibited on YouTube,” YouTube spokesperson Ivy Choi said in a statement to NBC News. “We continue to heavily invest in the policies and systems that connect people to high-quality content, and our commitment to supporting the 2024 election is steadfast.”

Robert Weissman, the president of Public Citizen, issued the following statement in response:

“The FEC’s slow-walking of the political deepfake issue threatens our democracy. The schedule described by FEC Chair Cooksey means that, even if the agency decides to proceed with a rulemaking on deepfakes, it’s not likely to have a rule out in time for the 2024 election. That’s intolerable.

"There’s no reason for the Federal Election Commission to stand idly by and risk fraud and fakery overwhelming election integrity. However, there’s still time for the agency to expedite its action and get a clear rule in place. It must do so.

"At the same time, the comments from the FEC Chair should sound the alarm for Congress and state legislators: You cannot count on the FEC to defend us from deepfakes. It’s up to you.”