Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner, D-Va., said today that Congress should focus AI legislation efforts on confidence in U.S. elections, warning that AI can make the 2016 elections look like “child’s play” compared to what’s in store for 2024.
During a Punchbowl News event this morning, the congressman said that confidence in U.S. elections is one of the “most vulnerable” AI domains at this moment in time, cautioning that deepfakes – which use a form of AI called deep learning to create images or videos of fake events – have the power to influence Federal elections.
“2016 would be child’s play compared to 2024 – both in terms of the amount of not just deepfakes, but the time and scale with which you can create these tools is exponentially higher,” Sen. Warner said. “But as we’ve seen, a democracy alone, legislative approach probably won’t have enough juice to get through.”
“And you could say, ‘Well, there’s always been misinformation and disinformation tools out there,’ [but] this happens at a scale and a speed which we could never predict,” he added.
Along with confidence in elections, Sen. Warner said “confidence in public markets” is another vulnerable area when it comes to AI. He believes these are two areas where Congress should focus its efforts, as both domains have seen “great interest” from members of Congress on both sides of the aisle.
“The notion that AI around confidence in public elections and public markets, the tools could be so much more powerful than traditional disruption … directionally, this is where I think we could kind of put together the notional idea and guardrails, even in a Congress that’s challenged,” Sen. Warner said.
The congressman’s call for AI guardrails comes after Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Director Jen Easterly said last month that local election officials are also concerned about deepfakes. Easterly said CISA is working hard to combat this newer threat and is “now very focused on the local offices,” and bringing them the support they need.
Additionally, a bipartisan group of senators introduced legislation last month that aims to ban deepfakes depicting Federal candidates in political ads. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., said she hopes to approve legislation creating AI “guardrails” on election security by the end of this year.
