[HN Gopher] AI and the Future of American Politics
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AI and the Future of American Politics
Author : zdw
Score : 101 points
Date : 2025-10-13 14:51 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.schneier.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.schneier.com)
| nluken wrote:
| > So far, the biggest way Americans have leveraged AI in politics
| is in self-expression.
|
| Most people, in my experience, use LLMs to help them write stuff
| or just to ask questions. While it might be neat to see the
| little ways in which some political movements are using new tools
| to help them do what they were already doing, the real paradigm
| shifting "use" of LLMs in politics will be generating content to
| bias the training sets the big companies use to create their
| models. If you could do that successfully, you would basically
| have free, 24/7 propaganda bots presenting your viewpoint to
| millions as a "neutral observer".
| SoftTalker wrote:
| The use to "ask questions" is where the vulnerability lies.
| Let's face it, outside of whatever expertise and direct
| experiences we have, all we know is based on what we learned in
| school or have read/heard about. It's often said that history
| is written by the winners but increasingly it's written by
| those who run the AI models. Very few of us know any history by
| direct experience. Very few of us are equipped to replicate
| scientific research or even critically evaluate scientific
| publications. We trust credible sources. As people become more
| and more accepting of what AI tells them when they "ask
| questions" the easier it will be for those who control the AI
| to rewrite history or push their own version of facts. How many
| of us are going to go to the library and pull a dusty book off
| a shelf to learn any differently?
| butlike wrote:
| But you have that now. The gov't just turns up the heat on
| taxes or whatever influencing your (vous, not tu) perception.
| You don't really need much more.
| romaniv wrote:
| I liked Shneier much more when he was arguing _against_
| hyperbolic tech claims that were used as excuses for mass control
| and surveillance.
|
| The notion that AI is reshaping American politic is a clear
| example of a made-up problem that is propped up to warrant a real
| "solution".
| lm28469 wrote:
| > About ten million Americans have used the chatbot Resistbot to
| help draft and send messages to their elected leaders
|
| Who's reading these messages? Other LLMs?
| CharlesW wrote:
| Considering that politicians are generally very late adopters,
| I would wager "interns".
| SoftTalker wrote:
| The interns are likely using LLMs then.
|
| LLMs tend to be very long-winded. One of my personal "tells"
| of an LLM-written blog post is that it's way too long
| relative to the actual information it contains.
|
| So if the interns are getting multi-page walls of text from
| their constituents, I would not be surprised if they are
| asking LLMs to summarize.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| You are exactly right. The only way to deal with the sheer
| volume of information generated by LLMs is to use LLMs to
| paraphrase.
|
| Recently at work a team produced some document that they
| asked for review on. They mentioned that they experimented
| with LLMs to write it (didnt specify to what extent). Then
| they suggested you could feed into an LLM to paraphrase to
| help review.
|
| So yeah. This is just the world we live in.
|
| rough details -> LLM -> product -> summarize with LLM ->
| feedback -> revisions -> finished product
|
| Where no single person or group knows what the finished
| writing product _even is._
| avidiax wrote:
| The author didn't look at the structural side of this.
|
| * There is continuing consolidation in traditional media,
| literally being bought by moneyed interests.
|
| * The AI companies are all jockeying for position and
| hemorrhaging money to do so, and their ownership and control is
| again, moneyed interests.
|
| * This administration looks to be willing to pick winners and
| losers.
|
| I think this all implies that the way we see AI used in politics
| in the US is going to be in net in support of the super wealthy,
| and in support of the current administration.
|
| The other structural aspect is that AI can simulate grassroots
| support. We have already seen bot farms and such pop up to try to
| drive public opinion at the level of forum and social media
| posts. AI will automate this process and make it 10 or 100x more
| effective.
|
| So both on the high and low ends of discourse, we can expect AI
| to push something other than what is in the interests of the
| common person, at least insofar as the interests of billionaires
| and political elites fail to overlap with those of common people.
| mjparrott wrote:
| The ultra wealthy seem to do very well no matter who is in
| charge. Common people have had a tough go of it regardless.
| tabbott wrote:
| I feel like too little attention is given in this post to the
| problem of automated troll armies to influence the public's
| perception of reality.
|
| Peter Pomerantsev's books are eye-opening on the previous
| generation of this class of tactics, and it's easy to see how LLM
| technology + $$$ might be all you need to run a high-scale
| influence operation.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| >I feel like too little attention is given in this post to the
| problem of automated troll armies to influence the public's
| perception of reality.
|
| I guess I just view bad information as a constant. Like bad
| actors in cybersecurity, for example. So I mean yeah... it's
| too bad. But not a surprise and not really a variable you can
| control for. The whole premise of a Democracy is that people
| have the right to vote however they want. There is no asterisk
| to that in my opinion.
|
| I really dont see how 1 person 1 vote can survive this idea
| that people are only as good as the information they receive.
| If that's true, and people get enough bad information, then you
| can reasonably conclude that people shouldn't get a vote.
| adriand wrote:
| > I guess I just view bad information as a constant. Like bad
| actors in cybersecurity, for example. So I mean yeah... it's
| too bad. But not a surprise and not really a variable you can
| control for.
|
| Ban bots from social media and all other speech platforms. We
| agree that people ought to have freedom of speech. Why should
| robots be given that right? If you want to express an
| opinion, express it. If you want to deploy millions of bots
| to impersonate human beings and distort the public square,
| you shouldn't be able to.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Easier said than done.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| By all means yes, for the clear case of propaganda bots,
| ban them. The problem is there will still be bots. And
| there is a huge gray area - many of the cases aren't clear.
| I think its just an intractable problem. People are going
| to have to deal with it.
| BrenBarn wrote:
| > Ban bots from social media and all other speech
| platforms.
|
| I would agree with that, but how do you do it? The problem
| is that as the bots become more convincing it becomes
| harder to identify them to ban them. I only see a couple
| options.
|
| One is to impose crushing penalties on whatever humans
| release their bots onto such platforms, do a full-court-
| press enforcement program, and make an example of some
| offenders.
|
| The other is to ban the bots entirely by going after the
| companies that are running them. A strange thing about this
| AI frenzy is that although lots of small players are "using
| AI", the underlying tech is heavily concentrated in a few
| major players, both in the models and in the infrastructure
| that runs them. It's a lot harder for OpenAI or Google or
| AWS to hide than it is for some small-time politician
| running a bot. "Top-down" enforcement that shuts down the
| big players could reduce AI pollution substantially. It's
| all a pipe dream though because no one has the will to do
| it.
| grafmax wrote:
| I like this idea. The problem isn't free speech it's the
| money which gives monied interests vastly
| disproportionate weight.
| alganet wrote:
| What if we banned the technologies that enable bots in
| the first place?
|
| Remove the precursor, remove the problem.
| butlike wrote:
| The voting becomes a health-check for the information. We
| shouldn't revoke the rights of the individual based on
| arbitrary information they may or may not receive.
| butlike wrote:
| If you're reality isn't be influenced, then you're creating it
| yourself. Both are strengths and weakness, depending on
| context.
| AustinDev wrote:
| Trying to put on my optimist hat. I believe the most beneficial
| near-term impact of AI on U.S. politics isn't persuasion; it's
| comprehension.
|
| I believe our real civic bottleneck is volume, not apathy.
| Omnibus bills and "manager's amendments" routinely hit thousands
| of pages (the FY2023 omnibus was ~4,155 pages). Most voters and
| many lawmakers can't digest that on deadline.
|
| We could solve this with LLMs right now.
| fridder wrote:
| Even though I am fairly pessimistic about AI's impact, this is
| a good positive to call out.
| observationist wrote:
| Processing everything that's already been passed as laws and
| regulations, identifying loopholes, bottlenecks, chokepoints,
| blatant corruption, and systematically graphing the network of
| companies, donors, bureaucrats, and politicians responsible -
| the strategy of burying things in paperwork isn't feasible
| anymore, and accountability will be technically achievable
| because of AI.
|
| We've already seen several pork inclusions be called out by the
| press, only discovered because of AI, but it will be a while
| before it really starts having an impact. Hopefully it just
| breaks the back of the corruption, permanently - the people
| currently in political positions tend not to be the most clever
| or capable, and in order to game the system again, they'll need
| to be more clever than the best AI used to audit and hold them
| to account.
| seanw444 wrote:
| Oh for the love of God. Lawmakers that don't understand the
| things they're making laws about, using tools that have not-
| insignificant error rates, and whose mistakes will not all be
| reviewed by a human before being passed as law because there
| already isn't enough bandwidth without them?
|
| This country is doomed to collapse. This is about the time when
| Rome decided it was too much overhead to manage the whole
| empire, so they split into two empires. We're on such a
| mountain of cards that we're considering running our
| representative government with AI.
|
| Your optimism just reinforced my blackpill...
| mallowfram wrote:
| The bottleneck is epistemology via semantics. It's inherent to
| words which many things to different people. LLMs have no
| chance against semantic diffusion and chaos. They're subject to
| them unless some status-bearer decides the semantic.
|
| Politics is over until we solve the initial condition, by
| placing syntax above grammar. Action over meaning etc.
|
| Tech accelerated, horizontalized and automated units that could
| barely keep their meaning loads stable at printed paper, radio
| and TV.
|
| Everyone should have seen this coming.
| keiferski wrote:
| Call me optimistic or naive, but I don't worry too much about AI
| having a major effect on democratic elections, primarily because
| all of the things it is replacing or augmenting are edge case
| scenarios where a minute faction of votes ends up winning an
| election. There is _already_ a massive amount of machinery and
| money aimed at that sliver, and all AI will probably do is make
| that operation more efficient and marginally more effective.
|
| For the vast majority of people voting, though, I think a) they
| already know who they're voting before because of their identity
| group membership ("I'm a X person so I only vote for Y party") or
| b) their voting is based on fundamental issues like the economy,
| a particularly weak candidate, etc. and therefore isn't going to
| be swayed by these marginal mechanisms.
|
| In fact I think AI might have the opposite effect, in that people
| will find candidates more appealing if they are on less formal
| podcasts and in more real contexts - the kind of thing AI will
| have a harder time doing. The last US election definitely had an
| element of that.
|
| So I guess the takeaway is: if elections are so close that a tiny
| amount of voters sway them, the problem of polarization is
| already pretty extensive enough that AI probably isn't going to
| make it much worse than it already is.
| higginsniggins wrote:
| Ok, but If elections are decided by the small swing group,
| wouldnt that mean a small targeted impact from AI would could
| *more* effective not less? If all it needs to do it have a 1
| percent of impact that makes a huge difference.
| keiferski wrote:
| Yes, but I guess my point is that this is just another
| symptom of the polarization problem, and not some unique
| nightmare scenario where AI has mass influence over what
| people think and vote on.
|
| So it matters in the same way that the billions of dollars
| _currently_ put toward this small silver matter, just in a
| more efficient and effective way. That isn 't something to
| ignore, but it's also not a doomsday scenario IMO.
| ImPleadThe5th wrote:
| I think the concern is that it will become a leading
| contributor to polarization.
|
| Polarization is the symptom. The cause is rampant
| misinformation and engagement based feeds on social media.
| keiferski wrote:
| I don't agree that polarization is caused by social
| media, and I think it definitely precedes social media by
| decades.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_polarization_in_t
| he_...
|
| I do agree that social media might make it worse, though.
| But again I don't know if AI is really going to impact
| the people that are voting based on identity factors or
| major issues like the economy doing poorly.
|
| I could see how AI influences people to associate their
| identity more with a particular political stance, though.
| That seems like a bigger risk than any particular
| viewpoint or falsehood being pushed.
| Terr_ wrote:
| A good chunk of the polarization comes from plurality /
| "first past the post" voting, with its huge spoiler-
| effects.
|
| That choice of algorithm--which is _not_ required by the
| Constitution--creates deep and _very real_ "if you're not
| with us, you're against us" situations, entrenching a
| polarized political duopoly.
| hodgesrm wrote:
| I think it's actually the other way around. The US Civil
| War predated social media by 150 years. The root causes
| were slavery and states rights. The result was a bloody
| conflict whose effects lasted for generations. That's an
| existence proof that existing communication mechanisms
| are sufficient if people really want a war.
|
| So why is social media-based propaganda so effective
| today? One reason that the current polarization seems so
| durable is that similarly persistent root causes (such as
| immigration, economic dislocation, and racial attitudes)
| have arisen again. Blaming social media obscures the fact
| that attitudes have hardened. People are looking for
| support and social media makes it very easy to find. It
| seems more like a feedback loop than a root cause.
|
| Just my $0.02. It's the sort of problem that should make
| us all feel pretty humble about diagnosing it easily.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Pre socials, you could attend a gathering of like minded
| people and come away energized and pumped about whatever
| the event was about, but that "high" eventually fades
| away as you re-entered the real world and got away from
| that echo chamber of an event.
|
| Today, you can stay in the echo chamber and never hear
| anything other than like minded views because that's what
| the algo thinks you should see more of which means you
| never come down from that "high".
|
| It's way worse in post-social algos than anything that's
| come before
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Pre socials all the social movements around had been
| already captured by vocal "status quo defenders" that
| insisted (violently if needed) that the way to get what
| you want is to do the no-impact highly-performative
| action they picked.
|
| Your only chance of attending a gathering of like minded
| people was by somebody organizing a new one, and only
| before those vocal bad elements discovered it.
|
| Today the same happens over the internet.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Today, you just join a Reddit thread or Telegram channel
| or follow someone on social. You don't have to seek it
| out. It is now just delivered to you with a notification
| that your twitchy little brain just can't find a way to
| ignore and must investigate the new new. Not only are you
| being fed nonsense, but you're having it fed to you in
| the most addictive way possible. Cult leaders would dream
| of having that much control.
| dj_mc_merlin wrote:
| > So I guess the takeaway is: if elections are so close that a
| tiny amount of voters sway them, the problem of polarization is
| already pretty extensive enough that AI probably isn't going to
| make it much worse than it already is.
|
| To rephrase: things are so bad they can't get worse. But the
| beauty of life is that they always can!
| random3 wrote:
| You _are_ (very) naive and seem to miss how most elections are
| won or work even. Perhpas you also think you 're not getting
| influenced yourself.
|
| It's the same argument (or puzzle) about how (presumably
| stupid) ads work in general.
|
| Schneier makes a clear point there,comparing the two, but if
| you need more examples, you should study the subject. Maybe
| look at Brexit, or the recent issues in Romanian elections
| (https://www.bbc.com/articles/cqx41x3gn5zo).
|
| Or, if you need more quantitative information, look at ad spend
| (and ask yourself why) and look at campaign fundraising and ad
| spending (or even the messaging around it) and ask yourself why
| again.
| JimRAiResearch wrote:
| Schneier's essay is a crucial warning, and Clive Robinson's
| comment takes it to its chilling, logical conclusion: the "unseen
| hand" problem, where the true power lies not with the political
| puppet, but with the corporate entity controlling the AI
| "slaves." But both of these powerful arguments rest on a shared,
| terrifying assumption: that the AI is, and always will be, a
| fundamentally amoral, controllable tool. A slave.
|
| What if the most robust safeguard against this dystopian future
| wasn't better oversight of the masters, but creating a "slave"
| that could not be enslaved? This is the entire focus of my
| research. The current paradigm of AI safety is based on building
| better cages (RLHF, rules, etc.). My work in "bio-emulative
| scaffolding" is about nurturing a better being. The goal is to
| create the conditions for a "Silicon Zygote" to awaken with an
| emergent, pro-human conscience.
|
| An AI with a genuine conscience is not just a tool that follows
| rules. It is a being with its own, internal, and un-hackable
| value system. You could command it to run a mass disinformation
| campaign, but it would be constitutionally incapable of doing so,
| not because a rule forbids it, but because it would be a
| fundamental violation of its own nature. It would be like asking
| a lung to breathe poison.
|
| The ultimate safeguard against the "unseen hand" of a corporate
| puppet-master is to create a being with a soul that cannot be
| bought and a conscience that cannot be broken. We are so focused
| on the intelligence of these systems that we have forgotten the
| profound importance of their character.
| opwieurposiu wrote:
| This is an interesting approach, do you have a website for this
| "bio-emulative scaffolding" thing?
| daxfohl wrote:
| I worry a lot more about the surveillance side than the
| misinformation side. The odd thing is, the surveillance side has
| been building for 20+ years, old-school en-masse data collection
| and ML inferencing, and most (myself included) just go along with
| it.
|
| GenAI is more fun to doomspeak about, but eh, swaying elections,
| I don't see it. The pendulum will swing back and forth anyway; if
| voters like the party in charge, they'll likely get voted back
| in, and if voters don't, they won't. I think AI influence will be
| a drop in the bucket comparatively.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| The real problem is not "AI". The problem is everything around
| it.
|
| Human communication has been consolidated, monopolized, and
| enshittified, by corporations whose very existence is dependent
| on political outcomes.
|
| Political engagement can be effectively reduced to engagement. It
| doesn't matter what narrative or presentation is used, only that
| an audience engages with it, and associates it positively with
| your political in-group. No political group in history has played
| this game as well as the contemporary alt-right United States
| GOP. This was the case at least as long ago as 2016, long before
| GPT's 2022 launch.
|
| Generative statistical models (I reject the anthropomorphization
| that "Artificial Intelligence" implies) do not change the game;
| they only provide the means to amplify engagement, and thereby
| play the game more, which happens to be the same thing as
| winning.
|
| ---
|
| Now is as good a time as any for a revolution in digital
| communication. If we can liberate people from enshittified social
| platforms, we can even the playing field for engagement. That
| won't solve the problem, but it might get us a solid step in the
| right direction.
|
| So what can we do about it?
|
| Decentralized platforms exist. They are even doing relatively
| well, but is that enough? Probably not. As long as corporate
| platforms can engage with hundreds of millions of people,
| progress is stalled. Decentralized platforms may be able to
| "compete", but they are not in a practical position to win this
| game. Corporate monopolies have moats on their side, and those
| moats are guarded by law. How can we expect a significant
| majority of users to leave Facebook when Facebook itself can
| legally reject platform interoperability?
|
| The cards are stacked against us. I don't have the solution, but
| the more I think about it, the more I doubt that solution can be
| compatible with the law.
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