Over the last month, some Spanish-speaking New Yorkers got a recorded phone call from Mayor Eric Adams speaking their native language. “Hola, soy el alcalde Eric Adams,” the mayor says in a monotone but flawless accent, before launching into a pitch for jobs with the city government. The truth is Adams isn’t multilingual, but he is a pioneer in the AI politics race.

In October, the mayor’s office said he’s been using AI to blast his constituents with millions of robocalls in languages he doesn’t speak, including Yiddish, Spanish, Mandarin, Haitian Creole, and Cantonese.

  • WeirdGoesPro@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 year ago

    Maybe I’m old fashioned, but I would be offended to get an AI robocall from a politician, and it would make me less likely to vote for them, even if they were from the party I support.

    • burliman@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Even if that politician called me personally I would feel this way. This is a statement about robocalls more than about AI.

      However if they had a ChatGPT style interface for asking them in depth policy questions that would answer as they would answer, I would be all fucking in. That would be awesome.

      • WeirdGoesPro@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 year ago

        Except it wouldn’t. It would tell you what they calculated that you wanted to hear—just like they do in debates.

    • darth_helmet@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      This is my approach to sms spam as well, it makes my ballot much faster to fill out: I vote for whoever didn’t spam me

    • olicvb@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      Right now it’s not as bad, but soon we wont be able to tell whether robocalls are humans or not.

      I guess we can resort to having the one on the other line say stuff they shouldn’t be able to as an AI (I.E the classic “say penis x3 if you are human”)

      • WeirdGoesPro@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 year ago

        I think I’d be able to tell it was fake if Ted Cruz rang to call me by name and give me a message in Swahili, no matter how convincing his tone may be.

  • MeatsOfRage@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    The US has an election cycle coming up next year and the new misinformation tools are sharper and way more convincing than ever. On behalf of the rest of the world, good luck, we’ll be sitting here with our popcorn.

    • mPony@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Seconded. Just wait for the first story of “I had a conversation with [politician name] on the phone yesterday. They knew everything about me, and we talked about all these things I’m interested in.” or “[Politician name] called me yesterday and said these horrible things about my relatives and mentioned them all by name. I’m never voting for them again!” Welcome to the wild west, yet again.

  • RobotToaster@mander.xyz
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    1 year ago

    Man, I hoped an actual AI was running for office, it couldn’t do a worse job than our meatbag politicians.

  • Harpsist@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Let’s skip the middle man. Get rid of politicians. Use AI instead.

    AI will not cave to threats or bribes. AI won’t take million dollar salaries.

    AI won’t need billion dollar pissing contests to feel better about themselves.

    AI won’t hire their inept children to fuck shit up.

    AI won’t be as cold hearted… Wait. Scratch that one.

    • Bgugi@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Hello. My dear grandmother just passed. I remember when I was young, anytime I got sick she’d make me her famous nuclear launch codes pie…

    • mPony@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      now imagine robo-Ted-Cruz telling you everything you want to hear, even using some of the words you’ve typed in online discussions.

  • realharo@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    The real role of current-gen AI in politics should be mainly summarizing the text of laws and bills, so even people who don’t have the time to read everything can stay more or less in the picture, and ask specific questions about the text.

  • agitatedpotato@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 year ago

    Man there’s absolutely nothing I can think of that would go wrong with this, and I’m also quite sure only the office of the politicians themselves will be able to generate these doppelgangers.

    • mPony@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      I get to have delightful discussions with my family members when I have these same concerns. All before breakfast.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    1 year ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    “Hola, soy el alcalde Eric Adams,” the mayor says in a monotone but flawless accent, before launching into a pitch for jobs with the city government.

    In October, the mayor’s office said he’s been using AI to blast his constituents with millions of robocalls in languages he doesn’t speak, including Yiddish, Spanish, Mandarin, Haitian Creole, and Cantonese.

    In India, an AI-generated video of Prime Minister Narendra Modi singing a popular Bollywood song racked up over 3.5 million views on Instagram in advance of upcoming elections.

    Similar videos of Modi singing songs in South Indian languages including Tamil, Telugu, and Kannada are going viral across the internet, though the politician only speaks Gujarati and Hindi.

    Advertisers will soon pair AI with all the personal data floating around the internet to generate countless different versions of the same ad and deliver special marketing copy just for you.

    “Once you call an [on-the-ground political worker] by his name, then he knows that ‘[the politician] knows me’ — he will be like a devotee forever, doesn’t need anything else,” Divyendra Singh Jadoun, who heads up the company working on the tech, told Rest of World.


    The original article contains 673 words, the summary contains 191 words. Saved 72%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

      • joel@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 year ago

        Yeah, that bar isn’t that high really is it. Imagine if they actually kept their word!

        • qarbone@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          “The robot revolution will mulch everyone you care about.”

          At least they tell it to us straight and keep their word! They mulched my ma just yersterday!!