Innovative AI - Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its impact on businesses.
AI and the Ballot Box: How Artificial Intelligence can influence future Elections
This week in Innovative AI
Innovative AI Shorts:
Countering the Divisive Effects: IMF Urges Smart Policies to Tackle AI's Impact on Income Equality
AI-Powered Transformation: Unlocking the Potential of Portfolio Management with Strategic Steps
Unlocking the Full Power of Business Intelligence: Going Beyond Data Visualization
Executives’ Highlight: The Influence Artificial Intelligence Can Have on Democratic Elections
Deep Tech Center insights: Presenting entAIngine - a platform to build your own enterprise-grade AI applications
Overview: Center for Deep Tech Innovation Events
Prompts for your Organization: ChatGPT to analyze CVs; Midjourney to create realistic pictures/photos
Tools to try out: Jasper.ai
Innovative AI Shorts
Countering the Divisive Effects: IMF Urges Smart Policies to Tackle AI's Impact on Income Equality
According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to enhance economic growth but could also exacerbate income inequality. In a recent report, the IMF highlighted that AI has the capacity to enhance productivity, expand the range of jobs, and improve market competition. However, it also cautioned that without the appropriate policies in place, AI could disproportionately benefit certain individuals or groups, leading to wider income disparities. The IMF emphasized the importance of policies that promote equal access to AI technologies, ensure fair competition, and invest in job retraining programs to mitigate the potential negative effects of AI on income inequality.
AI-Powered Transformation: Unlocking the Potential of Portfolio Management with Strategic Steps
Forbes Tech Council has recently published an article titled "Strategic Portfolio Management: 20 Steps Toward an AI-Powered Transformation." The article discusses the significance of incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) into portfolio management strategies. The author emphasizes the need for organizations to embrace AI to gain a competitive edge in today's rapidly evolving business landscape. The article outlines twenty key steps that businesses can take to implement AI-powered portfolio management effectively. These steps range from aligning AI initiatives with business goals to investing in the right technology infrastructure and talent. The article serves as a valuable resource for companies looking to leverage AI in portfolio management for enhanced decision-making and performance.
Unlocking the Full Power of Business Intelligence: Going Beyond Data Visualization
Business intelligence is crucial for companies to make informed decisions and stay ahead of the competition. However, many businesses are only scratching the surface when it comes to leveraging the full potential of their business intelligence tools. In a recent article by Finance Magnates, the importance of utilizing comprehensive business intelligence solutions was explored. These solutions go beyond mere data collection and visualization and instead delve into predictive analysis, real-time monitoring, and automation. By adopting such robust business intelligence tools, companies can gain a deeper understanding of their operations, improve decision-making processes, and ultimately drive business growth.
The Influence Artificial Intelligence Can Have on Democratic Elections
In light of this year's upcoming elections in the US and other countries, there are growing fears that advances in artificial intelligence could be used to significantly influence the upcoming elections.
An estimated 2bn people, or around half of the world’s adult population, are expected to head to the polls in 2024, including in the US, the EU, India and the UK. - Financial Times (2024)
In particular, the risks of deliberately spreading misinformation through fake videos, audio messages, and targeted propaganda campaigns are in focus. In this issue of Innovative AI, we will take a closer look at this topic, examine the threats, and outline what is already being done to counter them.
Disinformation is not a new phenomenon
The threat of disinformation in elections is not a novel concern. Historically, elections have been susceptible to various forms of misinformation, from propaganda to outright falsehoods. However, the integration of AI technologies has escalated the potential impact of these threats. AI's ability to generate convincing fake news, deepfakes, and tailored propaganda at an unprecedented scale and speed has raised alarms among experts and policymakers.
Major media organizations, such as the Guardian, have already indicated that a shift is taking place from traditional misinformation tactics to more sophisticated AI-driven methods, with the misinformation-driven 2016 and 2020 US presidential elections serving as a prelude to the more advanced strategies that AI could enable in the future. - for further reading also have a look at the Guardian (2023a)
How AI can negatively influence elections
AI's role in elections encompasses a broad spectrum of activities, from generating fake news and deepfakes to automating social media bots that mimic real voters. Further, AI can create photorealistic images, mimic voice audio, and produce convincingly human text. All of these capabilities not only deceive audiences but also erode the existing information ecosystem, making the job of journalists and fact-checkers increasingly challenging.
One of the most concerning aspects of AI in elections is the democratization and acceleration of propaganda. AI tools have made the creation of misleading content accessible to anyone with basic digital skills, amid limited regulation. This ease of content creation, coupled with the potential for widespread dissemination, creates a fertile ground for misinformation to flourish.
Just imagine having an army of people who are willing to deliberately spread misinformation, who don't do this on a small scale by going from house to house or posting on their social media channels, but instead generate fake content in a fully automated way and spread it via many automated bots.
Another aspect that must be taken into account is the improved possibilities of foreign influence in elections. AI reduces language barriers thereby improving the credibility of content, making it easier for external actors to create content in the respective language needed.
In fact, a study conducted by the World Economic Forum in 2023 and 2024, which was published in the Financial Times, found that "AI-generated misinformation" was the second biggest threat among respondents for 2024.
Mitigating AI Threats on Elections
Addressing the threats posed by AI in elections requires a multifaceted approach which opens up the question of how big tech companies plan to help.
Knowing that X formally Twitter is increasingly reducing the possibilities to flag misinformation (thereto also have a look at this Guardian article (2023b)), we want to have a look at how other major players are addressing this threat.
According to an article in the Financial Times, experts fear that many big tech companies are less well equipped to tackle disinformation on their platforms as they have cut investment in teams dedicated to maintaining safe elections following the tech stock downturn in early 2023, e.g. Meta. X has also slashed content moderation resources in favor of what Elon Musk calls "free speech". - thereto also have a look at this Guardian Article (2023b).
The Financial Times also reports that efforts by US-based tech companies to invest in fact-checking and combating misinformation are even being politicized, “as rightwing US politicians accuse them of colluding with the government and academics to censor conservative views” - Financial Times (2024)
However, measures are being taken
Meta and Google recently announced guidelines that require campaigns to disclose whether their political advertising has been digitally altered. TikTok stipulates that synthetic or manipulated media depicting realistic scenes must be clearly disclosed through a sticker, label, or caption. In addition, media that violates the likeness of real private or public persons will be banned if it is used for advertising purposes, such as fraud. Even X, says it will either flag or remove misleading manipulated media if it causes harm, including uncertainty over political stability - for further reading also have a look at this article form The Wall Street Journal (2023).
In a recent blog post, OpenAI emphasizes the need for collaboration and the implementation of security measures to prevent the misuse of AI technologies. Ensuring the integrity of elections in the face of AI-driven disinformation means disseminating accurate election information, enforcing policies, and improving transparency. Accordingly, OpenAI is actively working to prevent the misuse of its technologies in elections. As described in OpenAI's blog, the company is implementing measures such as publishing accurate election information and enforcing policies against the creation of misleading AI-generated content.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella also acknowledges the risks of AI, but remains optimistic about developing technical solutions to combat disinformation. Yahoo Finance (2024).
The Global Discussion in Davos
The international community is increasingly recognizing the need to address the challenges posed by AI in safeguarding democratic processes. Thereto, this topic is also being discussed in Davos right now, reflecting the growing global consensus on the urgency of this issue.
Eventually, we are confident that we will soon be able to provide updates on the measures being taken to protect elections. To what extent these will be far-reaching enough remains to be seen.
Nevertheless, they should be implemented quickly. Especially in light of Bret Schafer, propaganda expert at the Alliance for Securing Democracy, assessment that "You can get people to the point of, 'Voting doesn't matter. Everybody's lying to us. This is all being staged. We can't control any outcomes here.' That leads to a significant decline and civic engagement." - Financial Times (2024)
Deep Tech Center insights:
In this category, we aim to keep you informed about both existing and recently launched products.
In addition to our consulting services, the Center for Deep Tech Innovation collaborates with entAIngine, a platform designed for the rapid and compliant generation of enterprise-grade AI applications.
Using entAIngine, everyone can develop AI applications for their specific use case. E.g. an application for:
scanning, summarizing, and categorizing emails
executing tailored SWOT and matching analysis of Startups
translating and simplifying letters for customers using OCR
writing reportings following predefined guidelines
many more…
Furthermore, we also build custom applications for you and we are developing a set of very useful pre-built applications.
So stay tuned for more details in the upcoming edition of Innovative AI!
If you are interested in delving deeper into entAIngine to find out how to develop your own compliant enterprise-grade AI application, reach out to us via the entAIngine website or directly here.
We would be happy to discuss the possibilities together with you.
Overview: Center for Deep Tech Innovation Events
As some of our readers might know, we offer a series of webinars on the topic of AI (and other technologies in the near future).
Below you find a list of upcoming webinars:
January 2024
Wednesday, January 24, 2023, 4:00 p.m. (CET) ChatGPT Beyond the hype - Embeddings RAGs & on-premise LLMs for Innovators
Register now here
February 2024
Wednesday, February 07, 2024, 4:00 p.m. (CET) Prompt Engineering for Business Transformation: A Workshop.
Register now here
For more content, feel free to visit our YouTube channel and LinkedIn
Prompts for your Organization
ChatGPT to analyze CVs:
”Create a short candidate summary from the following applicant's resume:
- upload file -
highlight the candidate's key skills and experiences in one short paragraph”
Midjourney to create realistic pictures/photos
/imagine apple sigma 85 f/1.4 --v 6.0
by generating an image in the style of a camera, you can create very realistic images
Tools to try out: Jasper.ai
Jasper.ai is an artificial intelligence-powered writing assistant designed to help users create written content efficiently. Leveraging advanced machine learning and natural language processing technologies, Jasper.ai can generate various types of content, including blog posts, marketing copy, and more. It assists in overcoming writer's block and streamlines the content creation process by providing suggestions and automating parts of the writing task. Jasper.ai is particularly useful for marketers, content creators, and businesses looking to scale their content production without compromising on quality.
Eventually, we come to the end of this newsletter. Stay tuned for the upcoming editions, where we will keep informing you about the latest developments and applications of AI for business and beyond.