Microsoft Economist Warns of AI Election Interference from ‘Bad Actors’

robotic science
Oli Scarff/Getty Images

Microsoft Chief Economist Michael Schwarz is warning that AI could lead to “bad actors” meddling in elections or creating spam.

People should be concerned about “A.I. being used by bad actors,” Schwarz said while speaking on a panel about AI at a World Economic Forum event on Wednesday, according to a report by CNBC News.

Schwarz went on to say that people should be more worried about the possibility of AI meddling than they should be about the possibility of AI taking their jobs.

“Before AI could take all your jobs, it could certainly do a lot of damage in the hands of spammers, people who want to manipulate elections,” he said.

The chief economist at Microsoft also seemed to suggest that AI taking people’s jobs will be a natural occurrence, pointing out that all new technologies, even cars, were risky for people when they were first introduced to the market.

“When AI makes us more productive, we as mankind ought to be better off — because we are able to produce more stuff,” he said. “Please remember, breaking is much easier than building.”

In 2019, Microsoft partnered with OpenAI, reportedly investing $1 billion. Now, the tech giant uses OpenAI’s popular AI chatbot ChatGPT to power Bing’s chatbot. In January, Microsoft announced a new multi-year multibillion-dollar investment in OpenAI.

What should especially concern voters about AI’s potential election meddling is the fact that it, like so many other entities in the United States, is controlled by the political left. OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot is known for having a left-wing political bias and going woke.

As Breitbart News reported in March, the co-founder of OpenAI admitted that the firm “made a mistake” by going woke and said the chatbot’s system “did not reflect the values we intended to be in there,” following accusations of political bias.

Corporate media organizations such as the Wall Street Journal and CNN have also pointed out that the Silicon Valley upstart uses their articles and content to train its ChatGPT chatbot.

You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.

COMMENTS

Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.