AI, Elections and Democracy: How Big Tech hijacks our free will and prices our consciousness

With 64 countries holding elections, 2024 is the election year. Four billion people can vote in an information age that was supposed to be as democratising as the Gutenberg press – anyone with access to the internet, has access to information.

Yet, the concept of truth is crumbling at the feet of disinformation campaigns and rumour bombs using generative AI. This is where an algorithm takes the data it was trained on to create new data, like cloning audio, fake imagery, and synthetic data that is not based on real-world events.

We think we are the product, but we are the raw material. The product is the ecosystem – the digital trading platform that companies like Google, Meta and more recently TikTok provides to sellers.

We are not just living through a tech revolution, but a tech-driven economic revolution. Does this make the business model of social platforms the inherent challenger of fair elections?

AI, Elections and Democracy: How Big Tech hijacks our free will and prices our consciousness

By Nikta Sabouri