Latest / The In-Between Tech and Trust Podcast / Why AI Makes Political Authenticity Harder to Trust – Dr. Michael Cohen (EP 24)

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Why AI Makes Political Authenticity Harder to Trust – Dr. Michael Cohen (EP 24) · The In-Between Tech and Trust Podcast

0:14
Hello, this is Eva and you're listening to the In Between Tech
0:18
and Trust podcast. In this week's episode, I talked
0:20
to Michael Cohen and Michael is political scientist, founder of
0:25
Congress in Your Pocket, which is an app that has been making
0:29
US legislative information accessible to everyday for
0:32
voters for almost 18 years now. He's also authored the book
0:37
Modern Political Campaigns and he's Executive Director of Fight
0:42
Hate, which is an organization that's working to combat
0:46
anti-Semitism on college campuses globally.
0:49
Michael also teaches digital political strategy at John
0:53
Hopkins and NYU, which is why he's one of the best persons to
0:58
talk to. When we get into the
1:00
intersection of how AI is supercharging political content
1:05
creation and what it does to a voter's ability to know what's
1:08
real, we also talk about micro targeting and how it has
1:13
fundamentally changed who campaigns actually talk to and
1:17
why. Michael also believes that the
1:19
most powerful way to fight online hate is to take the
1:23
conversation actually offline. One question that kept lingering
1:28
with me after our conversations? The following In a political
1:31
landscape that is flooded with AI generated content, how do we
1:37
keep authenticity? Or we already passed a point of
1:41
where it matters? I invite you to find an answer
1:44
for yourself to that question and I hope some further arise
1:48
and some are answered are also shared with you.
1:53
Hello, Michael, and welcome to the In Between Tech and Trust
1:56
podcast. Thank you so much for having me
1:58
on. I want to start the conversation
2:00
as I do with every guest, because you also come from a
2:03
background in technology and politics, and I want to know
2:07
your take on trust in that intersection and also what the
2:11
first thing is that comes to your mind so.
2:12
The first thing that comes to my mind when I think of tech and
2:15
trust is really your iPhone. It's the most personal device
2:18
you have and it's on us all the time.
2:20
We probably touch it more than we touch touch our spouses or
2:23
any other human being during the day.
2:24
And it's a two way political gateway.
2:27
You know, candidates can now reach you directly wherever you
2:30
are and you can in turn seek out information or stumble upon it
2:33
in your feed again everywhere. But now that ADI has sort of
2:36
supercharged that content creation, how how much we know
2:40
is real and authentic and worthy of your trust are all things
2:43
that are sort of up in play right now.
2:45
But again, it all goes back to that connected device that we
2:47
carry in our pockets. And now talking about carrying
2:50
something in your pockets, you found it Congress in your
2:53
pocket, which is perfect, like an introduction to something
2:56
that you've been working on heavily.
2:58
And you also founded it because you wanted to make the
3:02
legislative information accessible and you wanted to
3:05
make it accessible in real time. What problem were you trying to
3:08
solve and how did it turn out? Well, I, I think this came out
3:12
of my own just nerd him. I have a PhD in political
3:15
science and mass communication. My dissertation was on Congress.
3:18
And so there was a lot of information that I wish I had
3:21
for that dissertation that wasn't readily accessible.
3:23
I would have loved to have talked to staffers.
3:25
I would have loved to have talked to people around the
3:27
process that I was studying. And it was, it's very hard to
3:29
find that information. I mean, you would have to go to
3:32
spiral down notebooks that were basically out of date when after
3:35
right after you printed them, you'd have to go and pay premium
3:39
services, thousands of dollars a year that you could get on the
3:41
Internet. But it was super clunky and it
3:43
was even at that price, it was out of date.
3:44
And so I felt that voters should really have that access to
3:47
information directly. And over time, we built out the
3:50
legislative section, which started with members sponsored
3:53
and Co sponsored bills. And a few years ago we had
3:56
committees and subcommittee membership and staff.
3:58
But last January, where we added something that we thought was
4:01
really amazing, we added AI bill summaries, which provides real
4:05
context for people on what Capitol Hill is working on and
4:08
also distills down for people because they're not going to
4:11
read 400 to 500 pay bills, which are available online.
4:15
And we also offer links to that. But giving them a quick context
4:18
check within a summary really does allow people to understand
4:23
what is going on in the process, and it does build trust.
4:25
Talking about trust, and particularly in the political
4:29
context, information somehow has become an infrastructure because
4:33
it's also about the provision of transparency, about tangible
4:37
impact that politicians do want to have.
4:39
And we often assume that access to information strengthens and
4:44
democracy. But from your experience, it is
4:48
that automatically so? And does that then also create
4:51
trust? I think nothing is automatic in
4:53
the current world, right, that we're in right now.
4:55
I think trust is earned and not given.
4:57
I, I think that again, with our AI summaries, we sort of build
5:00
trust by building, by breaking down the walls of legalese, you
5:04
know, that end up in legislation, which I think is
5:06
super helpful. You get to know what's being
5:08
proposed and with our widgets, how far along you are in the
5:12
process. So if your member says that
5:13
they're working on something and you find out that's true, then
5:16
that's great, right? And if you find out it's
5:17
something that's not true, well, then you have the information to
5:20
know that your elected representatives are lying to you
5:23
and that destroys trust. But I'm saying that overall it's
5:26
good because you can become a more informed voter and act
5:29
accordingly. And that helps strengthen
5:30
democracy. But I think ultimately what
5:32
we're trying to do is to help strengthen trust in democracy
5:34
through the information we provide.
5:36
Now, how people use use that information is another thing,
5:40
and how people are willing to interact with that kind of
5:43
information is also another level because just because it
5:46
exists doesn't mean that people will use it.
5:48
And just because it exists doesn't mean that people will
5:50
automatically trust it. I mean, we founded our, you
5:54
know, our apps with the first iPhone.
5:56
And so we've been around 18 years and we are used by
5:58
Democrats, Republicans and independents, people who work on
6:01
Capitol Hill and people who work off of it, people who work in
6:03
the process and out of it. So I think to a real extent,
6:05
we've done a really good job of maintaining sort of neutrality.
6:08
We're just providing information.
6:10
We're not, you know, summarizing it in a way that frankly gives
6:13
it partisan context to one way or the other.
6:15
And so I think that that helps build trust as well, so.
6:18
With your apps, use it at the intersection of the provider of
6:22
information and of the consumer of them as well.
6:25
And sometimes the provision does also aim at providing a
6:30
particular glimpse into the way of how this information is
6:34
consumed. And then also the consumer
6:36
coming from a background of context of how they want to
6:39
interact with the politician in itself.
6:42
Do you think that it has become more crucial to understand of
6:46
how to interact with this intersection and what is your
6:50
role in balancing navigating that?
6:52
That's a really fair question. I think some of the things that
6:55
we do is just straight up to provide information, but we also
6:58
allow people to sort of interact with us.
7:01
And by us, I mean me, I actually answer every single e-mail that
7:04
comes to Congress in your pocket personally.
7:06
And I've done this now for 18 years and I find that I'm in,
7:09
I'm in very interesting conversations with people about
7:12
what the information is, how we get it, how much is it updated.
7:16
That's actually much more something that they care about
7:18
more than really the sourcing or even the the potential bias is
7:22
that they just want to be right. And I think that that's a really
7:24
interesting opportunity for us. I think one situation that we
7:28
ended up in is after January 6th, the riots on Capitol Hill
7:32
and the insurrection, we actually published in the app a
7:35
marker of people who voted for decertify the election.
7:39
And my rationale was that if you were on the right, you wanted to
7:43
know this because you wanted to support these people.
7:45
And if you were on the left, you wanted to know who they were so
7:47
that you could vote them out. And as it turns out, the only
7:49
people who were very angry about it were the people on the far
7:52
right. I actually got emails from
7:54
members of Congress who I won't name.
7:57
But you know, guy, it's very heated arguments with people
7:59
about I bet you didn't do this when Democrats did this, you
8:02
know, years ago for Nancy Pelosi.
8:04
And it's just, it went on and on.
8:05
And you go down this rabbit hole and I realized, wow, it's really
8:08
interesting, like how both sides really do react.
8:11
And I'm sure if the situation was flipped, the left would be
8:13
coming after me on that as well. But I felt like it was a very
8:16
crucial piece of information because if you were evaluating
8:19
who you were supporting, again, if you were a primary voter on
8:23
the right, you wanted to know that this this person stood with
8:26
Donald Trump, right. But on the left, you definitely
8:29
wanted to know that too, so that you can target them in elections
8:32
and at least, you know, have more information.
8:34
And so I thought that it was defensible, but it was also just
8:37
sort of an interesting microcosm of how, you know, the side that
8:40
felt aggrieved will come after you and then the other side will
8:44
be completely silent but happy about it.
8:46
And so to a real extent, like I was willing to take the hit up
8:50
until the election was done. And so like, once we ended up
8:53
after the midterm election where these people were re elected, I
8:56
took the information out. Why?
8:57
Because it wasn't relevant anymore, right?
8:59
People had made their decisions based upon the information that
9:01
they had. We moved on.
9:03
And so I think it's it's an interesting place that we are
9:06
where we are providing factual information and people will get
9:10
angry just at the fact that the information is there, even
9:13
though it is absolutely true and trustworthy.
9:15
And you can check the votes, but you end up in a situation where
9:18
you're like, OK, you know, this is the value our brand, this is
9:22
the value, you know, our non partisanship.
9:24
And I still feel to this day that it was a very defensible
9:27
thing that we did. And I don't know that it
9:29
would've done a different. Way.
9:30
And now that you said that you answer all the emails
9:33
personally, that is super interesting.
9:37
I think it builds trust. I think it does, you know, to
9:39
your point, I think, I think knowing that most of the time
9:42
when people go and they interact with a platform or a product or
9:45
a service, it goes into this ether of customer service and,
9:48
and it's gone and knowing you never hear back from somebody if
9:51
you do you think you're getting a bot or you're just getting a
9:54
disinterested person. And for me, I wanted them to
9:57
know that, look, I'm the founder.
9:58
This is a project that I care very deeply about and that
10:02
actually builds trust. I think that that has actually
10:04
helped me in situations where I've had to navigate with, you
10:09
know, people who frankly don't pay us a lot of money.
10:11
I mean, it's not a very expensive app.
10:12
I mean, it's 10 bucks and it's $10 US.
10:15
And so, you know, it's, it's not something that it's a huge
10:17
commitment for somebody, but when they do it, they are
10:20
committed to it. And whether you're spending
10:22
$1.10 dollars or $1000, you want to know that the people who are
10:25
behind it are really into it. And and so I think that helps.
10:28
And you also teach digital political strategy and also you
10:33
offered modern political campaigns.
10:36
And if we now go and dive into through the digital campaign,
10:40
highlighting now about how you interact with the political
10:43
landscape through your apps and so on, what is your experience,
10:47
how the political campaigning has changed and also how it has
10:52
changed the way trust is built in the political context?
10:55
Yeah, I think basically we've moved to digital campaigning.
10:57
So the campaigning when I first started in my career was very
11:01
analog. You know, we actually hit paper
11:03
lists, we would knock on doors. There was only so much you could
11:06
really do because advertising was so expensive, particularly
11:09
in the state and local levels. But if you were running, you
11:12
know, statewide campaigns or national campaigns, you have
11:14
plenty of money, but you'd be spending money indiscriminately,
11:17
essentially buying big, you know, geographic areas that
11:21
weren't hyper targeted to what was going on.
11:23
And, you know, a lot of advertising was very irrelevant
11:25
to people. And so it's very easy for people
11:27
to sort of tune out not being, you know, interested in what was
11:30
going on because politicians weren't essentially talking to
11:32
them. They were talking to this mass
11:33
group of people. And so right now what where we
11:35
are is that digital campaign is essentially hyper charged our
11:38
awareness of candidates because now they can reach us at scale.
11:41
And again, as we were talking about earlier on your personal
11:43
devices. So trust is built digitally
11:45
through like two things that I say is essentially authenticity
11:49
and consistency. And this means that, you know,
11:52
is the candidate believable? And then when challenged, do
11:54
they remain trustworthy? And we don't expect our
11:57
candidates to be perfect, but we do expect them to be real.
11:59
And then on the campaign side, the micro targeting of all of
12:03
this, you know, it really says that I don't know, I no longer
12:06
have to go ahead and spend thousands of dollars on people
12:09
who are a knock interested in politics and be not interested
12:12
in my candidate at any level. And so you can now discern,
12:15
particularly in the United States, with the data that we
12:17
have, which voters might be interested in my my messaging
12:21
and then target those voters that are most most reachable to
12:24
activate and also to persuade so that you don't waste money.
12:27
But then you actually end up reaching more people in a more
12:30
interesting way. And now with AI, you have a lot
12:33
more ability to sort of create content around that.
12:36
And then we'll talk more about this and why there can be
12:39
pitfalls about it, but to reach smaller and smaller and smaller
12:42
groups of people in a much more personal and powerful way.
12:46
And to me, I think that's actually a good thing because
12:47
what happened in the United States and maybe has happened in
12:50
your country as well, as well as around the world.
12:51
The way I've seen it from the outside looking in is that
12:54
politicians have have sort of doubled down on their bases of
12:58
support and they have stopped talking to the other side or
13:01
they have stopped talking to those people who are actually
13:03
reachable. But now because you can hyper
13:05
target and now you can reach people with scale and with
13:08
content that can be created rather quickly online, that can
13:12
be interesting and powerful, you now have more incentive to reach
13:15
out beyond the people that you can just get just by showing up
13:20
or just by getting them to show up.
13:21
You could now get people who you would normally have said in it
13:25
nineties, 2000s and even the twenty 10s that it was just too
13:29
expensive. We couldn't afford it talking.
13:31
About content does. And if it does, how does
13:35
generative AI change the way ethics is infiltrated and
13:40
campaigning it actually? Puts much more of a
13:42
responsibility on the people that I'm teaching and the people
13:45
that I'm trying to work through my own small system.
13:48
I teach a course in digital go campaigns over at Hopkins and I
13:51
teach a campaigns and international campaigns course
13:54
over at NYU this semester actually.
13:56
And so my my point of view on this is that as I teach them the
13:59
tools, you also need to teach them the responsibility and the
14:03
ethics that go along with it. And so to a real extent, the
14:06
pressure on campaigns is always to that is the one and singular
14:11
goal that every campaign has. It's essentially a a tech
14:14
startup that has an end date. And so you have to work within
14:18
that structure and within those those needs and with the with
14:21
those priorities, right. But also we need to do the thing
14:25
that that I keep telling my students is that you have to
14:27
give it adult supervision. Yeah, no matter what you end up
14:30
getting from AI slop is not just the piece of this.
14:34
I mean, you had a great discussion about this with a
14:35
previous interviewee that was, I was listening to this morning
14:39
while I was working out and it was great to hear you guys talk
14:41
about slop. But it's not just slop, not just
14:44
like low quality content, it's also disinformation,
14:47
manipulative content, content that takes things out of
14:49
context. I, I think that there's a lot of
14:51
ways that we need to make sure that we teach our students who
14:54
are going into this and our young professionals that there
14:57
is a line that you will be continuously put up against.
15:00
And you need to be able to understand what that line is and
15:03
what the consequences of going over that line are, not just for
15:06
you, not just for this campaign, but also for the broader
15:08
democracy that you, you work in. So what I'm trying to get people
15:12
to think about is not just their career or their client, but also
15:16
the industry of politics around you.
15:18
And that if we devalue what the industry of politics is and, and
15:21
we all have a stake in this industry, then that actually
15:25
backwards flows towards you, you know, individually and your
15:29
can't your opportunities to go and work in this, in this
15:32
endeavor. And I think to a real extent,
15:33
you know, all this has to be taught.
15:35
It has to be reinforced throughout the parties and it
15:38
has to be reinforced with people who are owned companies like I
15:42
do and then teach those people who are coming up if they didn't
15:45
learn it in college and certainly on the job, there is a
15:48
real impact to going to the dark side here.
15:50
What is the? One thing that you would want to
15:53
teach me and my listeners now that we should take away at
15:57
exactly what you described of like the industry and also
16:00
regarding it as more of a well ecosystem and also our role in
16:06
that regard hard so the bottom. Line that I would love people to
16:08
take away from would be if it's not real, if it's not authentic
16:12
and it's not factual, then don't do it.
16:16
Beyond that, everything else is is ancillary and also supportive
16:20
because at some level it will either come back to you
16:24
physically on your candidate candidate or metaphysically
16:27
through devaluing democracy. And that doesn't really help
16:30
anybody. And so to me, staying on the
16:32
right side of that actually does not only, you know, reinforce
16:36
trust and, and trust in democracy, but it also
16:38
reinforces trust in your candidate.
16:40
It's actually good for you if you do the right thing within
16:44
this space. And that's not the same to say
16:46
that everybody who does the right thing is always going to
16:48
win. But it does mean that when you
16:50
do the right things, it eventually will lead to the
16:53
right results. And so to a real extent, I think
16:55
that that's what I try to teach my students and what I would
16:58
hope to the people we're listening here when confronted
17:01
with these kind of ethical decisions every day,
17:03
particularly on the campaign trail.
17:04
Take a step back, take a breath, take a comment and say you know,
17:08
is this real, is this authentic and is it factual?
17:10
And if I can answer all three correctly, then go.
17:13
If you can't, or if one of those 3 or some somewhere on the wrong
17:17
side of it, you need to take a step back and you need to think
17:19
about what the potential impacts of this are and be truthful with
17:23
yourself and with your team now. Bringing tech into that equation
17:27
and looking into the way of also how we witness that tech became
17:33
more political. And there's also the discussion
17:36
around and whether it's politically sitting upstream or
17:39
downstream of like the usage of itself.
17:42
Would you say that tech is rather a tool in that equation
17:47
or is it also influencing the way of authenticity is being
17:52
perceived by those who look at the output of someone who's
17:56
campaigning for their next also position in the political
18:00
environment? We have to.
18:02
Understand that these are just tools, right?
18:04
Politics is sort of it's a very human enterprise.
18:07
And so even though we have AI and when you ask it certain
18:11
questions, it will give you very human answers.
18:13
You know, we have, we have a friend who's in a tough spot.
18:16
He's in the hospital right now. And, you know, I, my wife and I
18:19
were talking and I actually went and used Chachi BT to go and,
18:23
you know, try and get a sense of like how I should communicate
18:26
this, you know, to people and how you, how I should to think
18:29
about it. And it comes back with very
18:31
human responses. It's, it's a remarkable tool,
18:33
but it doesn't negate like the conversation I had with my wife
18:37
or visiting him yesterday in the hospital and his and his wife
18:41
and being there as a human being.
18:43
I, I think that we need to really understand that these are
18:46
just tools, OK? These are not replacements for
18:48
human beings. You know, whenever we make a
18:50
huge leap in in technology, humans automatically think that
18:54
we're going to somehow be devalued and that we're going to
18:57
go away and that, you know, the technology is going to take away
19:00
jobs or take away our value. When I and I think that there is
19:04
value in the tools, but there's much, much greater value in the
19:08
humans that are using these tools.
19:09
And so when you use it, you need to look at it from the
19:12
perspective of, you know, this is, this is additional
19:16
information, an additional tool that I can use to create or to
19:19
understand or to research or to communicate.
19:23
But that you're the one who's doing that, that ultimately
19:26
you're the one who makes the decision to hit send.
19:28
You're the one who ultimately decides to take whatever you
19:30
learned and go talk to somebody about it.
19:32
You're the one who who looks at all this information and has to
19:35
make sense of it and also is responsible for any
19:38
hallucinations that comes through the AI.
19:40
So you have to make sure you double check everything.
19:42
And so I think to a real extent, when you look at all of this,
19:44
you have to then put all of it into perspective of that we are
19:47
still human beings using tools now.
19:50
You're at the epicenter of also combining tech with your work
19:53
because you haven't only founded like Congress in your pocket,
19:57
but you also work as executive director for Fight Hate.
20:01
And you also look into the way of how it's directly
20:04
intersecting with combating hate or extremism.
20:09
Also the conversations that we have.
20:12
Like the political landscape and what role does digital
20:15
architecture play in that regard?
20:17
And also is there a way of identifying whether it's
20:21
amplifying or also decreasing division?
20:23
Well, thanks for. Mentioning fight hate.
20:25
This has been a thing that I've been associated with now for
20:29
about 8 months. First of all, it's an honor and
20:31
a privilege to work on these issues.
20:32
I'm Jewish and Fight Hate is an organization that works to to
20:35
eliminate anti-Semitism on college campuses worldwide.
20:38
And we have a number of different campuses all over the
20:40
place. And these students are
20:41
incredible rock stars. And they are meeting not just
20:44
among Jews, but they're also meeting with Muslim students and
20:47
with other people of different variations of religion and
20:50
ethnicity and color. And the idea here is that we
20:53
can't solve this alone. And so from a extremism online
20:57
perspective, it's very well documented that extremism online
21:02
and hate is self perpetuate, right?
21:04
And it's often generated by forces that actually want to
21:07
divide us, that have the interest in dividing people.
21:10
And because it's easier to conquer, you know, if you
21:12
divide, you can conquer, right? And it's an extremely
21:15
challenging fight online. And there were some outstanding,
21:17
really well funded organizations that are working on this,
21:20
including the Blue Square project by Robert Kraft, who is
21:22
doing magical work on this. It's very, very hard because it
21:26
will never end because AI is made it even easier to spread
21:29
this kind of hate. And from my perspective, when I
21:32
looked at this project, you know, fight, hey, what was
21:35
interesting to me was that they weren't limiting what they were
21:37
going to do just online. We have these tools.
21:40
How do you use them? And so my point of view is we
21:42
only use these digital tools to identify and organize students,
21:46
you know, who don't want to live with us.
21:47
And this is Jewish and non Jewish students on their
21:49
campuses. And eventually, you know,
21:50
because if you don't stop it on college campuses, it goes to
21:53
their families, it goes to their careers and it goes to their
21:55
communities. So like now is really the time
21:57
to do it and it really exists so that real people can work
22:00
through these issues in offline spaces.
22:02
And so I think that when I look at the tools that we have,
22:05
sometimes the best way to change that trajectory is to have
22:08
conversations offline, whether it's anti-Semitism or
22:12
Islamophobia or whatever. The best relationships that we
22:15
have are not online. You know, you and I met at a
22:19
conference and even though we could have met on LinkedIn or
22:22
somewhere else, we met in person.
22:24
And I think that that is a different kind of relationship
22:26
than when you meet somebody online.
22:28
I met a lot of them at this conference that we went to shout
22:31
out to the EU, you know, political tech summit, which was
22:35
fantastic. Yosef and then the team just
22:37
been magical, amazing leaders and and really forward thinkers.
22:41
But the magic of it really is, is that you bring people
22:44
together. So it's much easier to be mean
22:47
to somebody from behind the screen.
22:49
It's much more difficult to reconcile that with somebody
22:52
you're right in your face, right and who wants to talk to you,
22:55
who wants to work through these issues and who wants allies.
22:58
And I think that whether you're on the Muslim side of this or
23:01
the Jewish side of this or the Palestinian side or the Israeli
23:03
side of this, we really do want to sort of build those bridges
23:07
offline and using the digital tools that we have to bring
23:10
people together. You know, get the word out on,
23:13
on events that we're doing, you know, put together messaging
23:17
that brings people together that doesn't just fight back, but we
23:20
want to fight with allies. We don't.
23:22
And to do that, we do use digital tools, but we're not
23:26
using, you know, digital tools to try and change people's
23:28
minds. We feel that other people are
23:30
doing a really good job of that and at scale.
23:33
And we feel that the best, you know, work that we can do is on
23:36
the ground using the tools that we have and talking.
23:39
About tools and also the way of how are they foster
23:43
collaboration interactions or not and combining or comparing
23:48
that with the interactions that we have in real life.
23:52
What role do you see, you see currently taking trust in both
23:56
of those spheres, be it online, be it offline, like in light of
24:00
fight hate or also in general? And is it being driven by
24:05
technology or is it amplified by technology to increase or
24:10
decrease the trust that we have mutually?
24:12
Yeah, I think. Technology has not been a force
24:15
multiplier for trust. I think technology is, I think
24:19
it's fair to say after, you know, the past few years since
24:23
10/7 and, you know, particularly in the space that I'm working
24:25
with, with fight, hey, it has broken levels of trust between
24:30
people where we have, I've heard too many stories from my
24:34
students where the trust has been broken among friendships
24:38
and a lot of it has been generated through online
24:42
content. And it's very difficult to fight
24:44
back against that. I mean, people, you know, are on
24:47
their phones a lot and you know, the algorithm is optimized for
24:51
outrageous or hateful content. The stuff that's on top of us,
24:55
that's coming through the cloud is really devaluing the trust
24:58
that we have among each other. And so we have to fight much
25:01
harder. We have to fight the hate
25:03
offline together. And that to me is the crux of
25:07
the work that I do with fight hate.
25:09
And these students who are just fantastic.
25:11
They are willing to put themselves out there and to be
25:13
yelled at or to be discriminated against.
25:16
Any opportunity to somehow reduce the the hate on campus.
25:20
It's a really remarkable group of people and whatever they end
25:24
up doing and after college, I mean, these are people who are
25:27
going to be successful based upon just my own little slice of
25:31
their life. And I think that they understand
25:34
very clearly that and these are digital natives, that they can't
25:37
just fight back online, that that doesn't work right?
25:41
That it's much more impactful and powerful to do that offline.
25:46
And so to me, that's why I wake up every day feeling very lucky
25:49
that I get to do this work and who I get to work do it with.
25:52
Whether it's the students or whether it's our lay leaders or
25:54
whether it's the support I have for people like Jay Schiffman,
25:57
who should be mentioned on this podcast, who founded this after
26:00
10-7 and put a lot of his own time and money into it, and one
26:04
of the most impressive people I've met also.
26:06
Looking into the way of how you now mentioned your work with
26:10
your students in general, but then again, you also work with
26:15
students to teach them about future campaigning.
26:18
And you mentioned, like, NYU and John Hopkins.
26:21
But is there something that your students understand about
26:25
digital trust that earlier generations didn't?
26:28
Yeah. Yeah, they, they really have an
26:32
I'm, I'm not going to curse on, on, on your, on your fair
26:35
podcast, but they have high BS meters.
26:38
They do, but they know what's it's much their authenticity
26:42
meters operated exponentially higher than ours do.
26:45
They could spot this stuff a mile away and much quicker.
26:48
They also get the joke on what is AI and what is it when it's
26:51
appropriate and funny and interesting and when it's trying
26:55
to be manipulative. And so they really, since they
26:57
grew up with this, really understand some of the
26:59
subcultures that exist within online and wine digital and
27:03
especially digital campaigning. And so to me, like, that's
27:06
really great, you know, and they also, but the thing that I'm
27:09
concerned about, and I think that they're concerned about as
27:11
well, is that things are getting to the point where the
27:13
development of AI has become so rapid.
27:16
I mean, just in the past year, the quality of the video, the
27:19
past 12 months, the quality of the video that we can get
27:22
through simple prompts to now is very, very dramatic.
27:26
I mean, seeing Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise fight on through AI and
27:31
it looks real like it is. It was really hard.
27:34
I was looking at this. I'm like, is this a movie that
27:36
I'm missing? What's going on here?
27:37
And of course, it was, it was AI.
27:39
And like, it's getting me. And students are saying, yeah,
27:42
you know, it's getting to the point where even they are
27:44
starting to be concerned about this.
27:46
And so I think to a certain extent, if those people can't
27:49
spot it really quickly, then we know we're sort of in trouble.
27:52
And so we have to pay much, much more attention to what this is
27:55
and how it's being distributed. But they also understand what
27:58
works online. I mean, they know what's funny
28:00
and interesting and cool, and they also understand what's
28:02
cringe. And so you have to pair this
28:06
with how I teach. You know, in both classes, they
28:08
get clients in the beginning of the semester.
28:10
And so like, we don't have standard essays or quizzes or
28:14
tests. We have them choose their own
28:16
political candidates at the beginning of semester and then
28:18
we have them follow through what they, what they want to
28:21
construct for their, their candidates.
28:23
Now, some of this does include AI.
28:24
And so when you, when they start using the tools, they realize
28:28
not just conceptually, but also hands on that, Oh wow, I could
28:32
do this. It is right, I could and then I
28:34
could do that, but it's really cringe, right?
28:37
And so to a real extent, they can recognize the content that's
28:40
really great online. But once they start using the
28:43
tools, they actually understand the limits and also the benefits
28:47
of what the tools can do for them.
28:49
And then also the ethics around them.
28:50
And I think that with all of that, getting them hands on into
28:53
a campaign right away that they care about, not me, like they
28:57
choose the their own candidates, not me.
28:59
It really brings them into the process and really makes it real
29:03
for them. And then when they leave my
29:05
class, they can take this and show this to a potential
29:07
employer and say, hey, look, this is a campaign plan.
29:10
We did. This is content that we produce.
29:12
This is all the kinds of different things that you would
29:14
do in a campaign. They can now show examples of
29:17
actual real world work that they would have done for a client had
29:20
they had that client. And I think that that changes
29:23
how the students look at the tools that we have and also
29:26
changes the platforms and the other things that they want to
29:29
go ahead and build, right? Because they understand, oh,
29:31
wait a minute, you know, I had a chance to work on this in my
29:34
class. There's a gap here.
29:36
We can go and do this better or wow, there's a really big
29:39
problem here. We need to work on a tool that
29:41
would mitigate this kind of misinformation or
29:43
disinformation. And so I think to a real extent,
29:45
putting them in those kinds of roles really does make it much
29:49
more interesting for them, and it also makes them better
29:51
professionals on the way out. What do younger?
29:53
Generations understand differently about ethics and AI
29:57
than potentially older ones do, so I think.
30:00
Older people right now are much more concerned about AI just
30:03
globally, like we all think that, you know, if you were to
30:06
ask the olds, the olds would say, oh God, this is going to
30:09
kill us all. And this is Terminator kind of
30:11
level stuff, you know, just looking for the next shoe to
30:14
drop. Students are looking at this as
30:16
like, wow, this is kind of interesting.
30:18
This is, this is very, you know, how do I get, how do I use this,
30:21
you know, to my advantage? How do I use this in my, my
30:23
school work? How do I use this in my, my
30:25
regular life? They, they look at it as if we
30:28
look at it like spell check. Like, do you remember when spell
30:30
check happens? You know, when I remember when I
30:32
first used spell check on Microsoft Word and I was like,
30:35
wow, this is great. I don't need to look up this
30:37
word because the squiggly line is telling me that I spelled,
30:40
they're wrong, you know, and like, that's amazing, right?
30:43
And so now people are saying to themselves, OK, well, how much
30:47
do I need to do, you know, with the tools that I have and still
30:51
make sure it's still me, right? And so I think that the place
30:54
that they're navigating is that because it can create content
30:58
from scratch. And it is also a big challenge
31:01
from the education standpoint. How much am I getting?
31:03
Is AI driven? How much am I are they producing
31:06
is AI driven? You know, if you are not a
31:08
natural writer, AI is a really interesting lure for you, right?
31:13
If you are not a great researcher, you can get your
31:16
answers very quickly, and most of them will be right.
31:19
Some of them will be wrong. So like we have to teach them
31:21
how to use these tools because they're going to use these tools
31:24
and they're going to use them at a much more fluent rate then
31:28
then we're using them right now. And so like, for example, in my
31:30
classes, and I'll tell my students this right now, the
31:33
secret sauce to my classes is that now basically a quarter of
31:36
your grade is your class participation.
31:38
So if I get really great writing from you and I get really
31:41
interesting and thought provoking pieces from you or
31:44
great content, but you are basically a zombie in class.
31:47
Well, it's pretty obvious to me who's doing the work right now.
31:50
On the other side. I tell them, hey, there are
31:52
certain uses of AI that I encourage you to use, right?
31:56
We actually do exercises where you ask them to use AI to
31:59
produce content so they can see what it can do or use it for
32:02
research on certain topics that are esoterica that they would
32:05
never be able to find, right. And then go ahead and double
32:08
check that kind of information to make sure it's right.
32:10
So I think there's a lot of ways to sort of build trust within
32:13
the classroom, build trust within our communities and, and
32:15
in our careers and especially in our politics.
32:18
And to me, that is, that is what we have to lean into now because
32:22
the tools and the digitals are all pushing it back on trust,
32:26
right? So we have to lean into trust as
32:28
human beings in all phases of what we do so that we can remain
32:32
human and remain the kind of people we want we strive to be.
32:35
Yeah. And leaning into trust is
32:37
exactly like the transition that I want to make now with you,
32:41
because I want to lean into some in between moments when I ask
32:45
you the first moment to share. And that is, is like trust in
32:49
democracy feels like to you. It feels like it's.
32:52
Being challenged and. What should in a campaign
32:55
technology never do It's. Never replaced into human
32:58
judgment and what? Is the real danger of AI?
33:01
That's a very interesting question.
33:02
I think the real danger of AI is alienation, that we lose trust
33:06
in democracy and we lose trust in each other along the way.
33:09
What? Do voters need more of they
33:12
need? More in person interactions with
33:14
the candidates and their tiers. And I think that that that's a,
33:17
that's a huge piece of campaigning.
33:18
And we still find today that the research does land that point
33:22
that if you interact with people is a much more powerful
33:26
experience and also a much more persuasive one.
33:28
And. Is there a word that you can use
33:31
to share if you're currently in between something?
33:34
I think. I don't know.
33:35
Yeah, this was hard for me. I think the word authenticity is
33:38
a word that I find that I grapple with everyday.
33:41
How much of what I'm seeing is real?
33:43
How much of what I'm seeing is generated, I'm seeing, you know,
33:45
in all phases of my life. And I, I think that the what
33:48
voters absolutely want, and this is cross cultural and cross
33:51
national is they want real and they want authentic, but they
33:55
also understand that there's a lot of digital tools now that
33:57
are fighting against that because they're easy to use.
34:00
And so it actually places a higher premium on authenticity.
34:04
But I think that we are struggling with that word right
34:06
now and what it means. I think that that's that's
34:08
something that we have to reconcile over the next several
34:10
years. What a great end to a great.
34:12
Conversation. I enjoyed having you as a guest
34:14
and thank you so much, Michael for joining the In Between Tech
34:17
and Trust podcast. Thank you so much for everything
34:19
I. Appreciate it and thanks for
34:20
listening everybody.