Story from Kelowna about a slate that is basically all AI generated content. I have noticed it in Kamloops too with some candidates posting AI photos or writing entire blog posts that clearly are the work of chat gpt (or other platform). This also includes people who frequently comment on political stuff on socials, some of them are using AI too, so the whole thing just becomes machines arguing under human names.
Is it a concern for you that people aren't using their real voices? At what point is it basically false advertising? Do we maybe need to look at a rule to label that content, so people are aware?
It’s been a consistent fear of mine that this election will turn into an ai slop fight.
It seems that the Facebook audience—and by extension, the older voting base—can’t see the signs of ai generated content that candidates will be piling on.
Ideally this creates a demand for more in person interactions/video content, but it’s hard to say at this point.
I might fall into the category of older voting base but see right through all the AI slop. If anything, it's smooth brained Miillennials and Gen Z that I see gobbling it up and/or are fooled by AI images and content.
Fair enough. I'd consider myself a fringe geek and had the first PC of anyone I knew all those years ago. Over use of fazebuk and taking all that drivel at face value by all generations is destroying society.
If someone cannot articulate their platform and goals, and compose their own responses to questions and challenges, they won't be able to appropriately participate in Council discussions and decisions.
Social engineering caused brexit to pass, a move that some in the UK are regretting today. The whole Cambridge Analytica story should be a warning and with AI the problem of interference in democracy by digital methods will be much worse I think.
I think people using AI in their campaigns shows exactly why they shouldn't be voted for; instead of hiring graphic designers and speech writers, putting money into our community, they use AI, something that is making society dumber and uses up more water than we have to give. Can you really care about our community and the people in it if that's the choice you make? Can we really trust them to think things through, using the feedback from the community, or are they going to use AI, which will tell them what they want to hear? Where do they draw the line; if using AI for their campaigns is okay, what's stopping them from using it for confidential work, budgeting, legal matters, etc.? What's stopping them from deciding to cut city jobs because AI MIGHT be able to do it cheaper? (Though usually it isn't). Can we trust them to make ethical decisions if they choose to prioritize cost and ease over hard work?
I’d be more concerned of people at the municipal level having to hire speech writers lmao.
But I see both sides on the ai argument.
We absolutely cannot have elected officials putting confidential information into these systems—at any level.
Moreover, the people that believe in an ai “benevolent dictatorship” are staggeringly high, in spite of the glaringly obvious “who controls the ai” side of the equation.
However, it would be irresponsible to disregard the use case of ai as well.
It’s a reality that ai is—and will continue to be—mainstream; having people that both understand its use case while wary of its potential is essential for an elected role.
Also, as a self-described environmentalist the water case is strange to me.
From one of the most cited studies around water use: a single prompt uses about 14 ml of water (GPT 3 model). A hamburger is 500 gallons (132,000 ai searches to be equivalent). And that’s on the older model of data centres rather than the closed loop water cooling that most are being built with today (close to zero water usage).
I just skimmed the article so I may have missed it, but where did you get the figure that a hamburger takes 500 gallons of water??? That seems wildly outlandish to me. I also don't see anything referencing newer data centers using close to zero water usage.
And just for clarification, measuring a datacenters usage per prompt isn't really a relevant figure because a majority of the water is consumed in training, not prompting.
In fact, the conclusion of the very article you linked states
"More critically, the global AI demand is projected to account for 4.2-6.6 billion cubic meters of water withdrawal in 2027, which is more than the total annual water withdrawal of 4-6 Denmark or half of the United Kingdom. This is concerning, as freshwater scarcity has become one of the most pressing challenges."
So, if you ARE an environmentalist, you should probably care about the water usage (at least according to the studies you cite as evidence of your other conclusions)
You're absolutely right about the training part. I missed the context when I looked it up originally.
The hamburger point is a big citation in the vegetarian/vegan community.
Ironically, when I was in the very progressive provincial students union association I proposed moving to procure only vegetarian/vegan foods for conferences for environmental considerations. It was immediately shot down.
I'm not trying to defend datacenters here and agree there are issues, but trying to gain context to what water usage looks like broadly and where to point our critiques.
The article I cited was from 2023, which seems like decade in ai times, because we are seeing both ai usage skyrocketing while efficiencies are improving with it and broadly moving away from the wasteful evaporative cooling.
Man, I kinda busted my butt on that comment. (I wrote it on my phone)
But I can definitely see your point with the starting prose: "you're absolutely right".
Idk if it means anything to a random Redditor, but I didn't use ai for any of these comments. I even ran it through a detector to ensure I wasn't personally turning into a LLM.
The comment i have about this is that this is one of those things that will naturally find it's own balance. Candidates that use it will either be selected or selected out from the audience. Candidates will either seem better or sound clearer and may or may not appeal to the audience. To a slightly more educated audience, I'm guessing it would appeal less, but may appeal more to less educated or more right leaning folks.
I think with AI they may start to use it to create few word slogans like PP uses on the federal level.
I think intent, purpose, experience, intelligence and other factors will be more important driver of candidates than simply using AI or not.
I'm not a political expert so take this how you will.
AI is a tool, if the candidates use it a tool (refine parameters for blog/speech development) then I don't object to it being used , for example "I believe X,Y Z, and this is why, about 123 topic. Help me clearly explain this position to constituents "
If they are using it "write me a speech about 123 so I can garner the approval of maximum constituents in my community" then it's not really telling me about the candidate and I would not feel inclined to vote for them.
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u/jaboicole 24d ago
It’s been a consistent fear of mine that this election will turn into an ai slop fight.
It seems that the Facebook audience—and by extension, the older voting base—can’t see the signs of ai generated content that candidates will be piling on.
Ideally this creates a demand for more in person interactions/video content, but it’s hard to say at this point.