AI’s Year at the Polls: A Comedic Curveball in Electoral Expectations
“The Year of the AI Election Wasn’t Quite What Everyone Expected”
“Predictions that AI would ‘hack’ the 2020 US elections, dramatically shifting voter behaviour ended up…not quite lining up.” Ah yes, the thrill of the not-quite-right prediction, the magic of expectation versus reality.
The omnipotent-sounding Artificial Intelligence, expected to tarnish the 2020 US elections, didn’t exactly meet its grand prophecies. All those fears brewed and served hot by a contingent of doom and gloom tech-pundits? Rather lukewarm by the end. Instead, AI played a rather pedestrian role in identifying potential voters and their preferred issues.
Let’s delve deeper into the anticipated “AI Election.” Despite widespread trepidations, AI turned out to be no clandestine puppet-master yanking political strings from behind a binary curtain. Instead, AI – like that introverted co-worker at an office party – proved useful in deciphering social behavior patterns and helping to facilitate more targeted, personalized political campaigns.
Facebook’s fresh-faced, AI-driven ads? Didn’t quite revolutionize the landscape, they were more of a new shade of lipstick on the pig that is political advertising. Meanwhile, Google decided to pump the breaks on micro-targeted political ads completely, trading in the hypothetical big-brother playbook for something marginally cordial.
Twitter, on the other hand, passed the time playing whack-a-mole with bad actors and debunked conspiracy theories, a task that requires some recognition. Nonetheless, it was still in the familiar sandbox of content moderation rather than navigating the uncharted territories of mind control and misinformation-frontiers once imagined for AI.
What about the cautionary tales of AI’s potential misuse? Like narrowly custom-crafted ads designed to sway your political stance one pixel at a time? These tactics, though new-age, were just a high-tech riff on the age-old artistry of political manipulation and persuasion.
As it turns out, 2020 wasn’t the year of the AI Election as foretold. It played its part, yes, but in the grand scheme of things, it was simply a bystander wearing an “I Voted” sticker, not the almighty director of the play. AI might have a major role in the years to come, but for the moment, let’s just appreciate the beauty of expectation versus reality, as it stands, with a side of sarcasm.