Analysis & Opinions - The New York Times

How ChatGPT Hijacks Democracy

| Jan. 15, 2023

Launched just weeks ago, ChatGPT is already threatening to upend how we draft everyday communications like emails, college essays and myriad other forms of writing.

Created by the company OpenAI, ChatGPT is a chatbot that can automatically respond to written prompts in a manner that is sometimes eerily close to human.

But for all the consternation over the potential for humans to be replaced by machines in formats like poetry and sitcom scripts, a far greater threat looms: artificial intelligence replacing humans in the democratic processes — not through voting, but through lobbying.

ChatGPT could automatically compose comments submitted in regulatory processes. It could write letters to the editor for publication in local newspapers. It could comment on news articles, blog entries and social media posts millions of times every day. It could mimic the work that the Russian Internet Research Agency did in its attempt to influence our 2016 elections, but without the agency’s reported multimillion-dollar budget and hundreds of employees.

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For more information on this publication: Belfer Communications Office
For Academic Citation: Sanders, Nathan E. and Bruce Schneier.“How ChatGPT Hijacks Democracy.” The New York Times, January 15, 2023.

The Authors

Nathan E. Sanders

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