Global Courant 2023-05-12 11:06:00
EXCLUSIVE: China’s extensive artificial intelligence (AI) operations could play a worrying role in the 2024 election cycle, Senator Pete Ricketts warned Thursday.
“There is definitely a possibility that they could do that before the 2024 election, and we have to be wary of that,” Ricketts told Fox News Digital in an interview in his Senate office.
At a Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee hearing earlier this month, Ricketts referred to China and the use of AI technology to create “deepfakes.” These are made-up videos and images that can look and sound like real people and events. A report released earlier this year by a US-based research firm alleged that a “pro-Chinese spam operation” used AI deepfakes technology to create videos of fake news anchors reciting Beijing propaganda. Those videos were distributed through social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, the report said. Meanwhile, China has its own rules limiting the reach of deepfakes within its borders.
Senator Pete Ricketts told Fox News Digital he was concerned about reports of AI deepfake technology being used by pro-Chinese groups. (Photo by Celal Gunes/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
Ricketts compared the effort to the Soviet Union’s massive propaganda network in the second half of the 20th century.
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“I think there is a big parallel here between what the Soviet Union did during the Cold War, where they spent ten-to-one more on this kind of propaganda, and what the CCP is doing now where they spent more than us ten one-to-one, and now they’re trying to leverage that dollar advantage with the technological advantage of using AI,” he said.
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Ricketts revealed that he himself had been in contact with AI experts at the University of Nebraska in Omaha and other places “to strategize about what we can do.”
“One of the most important things we really need to do is teach our own people how to look at the media now and think critically about it,” the senator said. “Because there’s a good chance it’s completely made up, it’s completely untrue. Even if you see someone, an image of someone you think you know, it can be created by a computer program.”
This illustration photo, taken January 30, 2023, shows a phone screen with a statement from the head of security policy at META with a fake video of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky calling on his soldiers to lay down their weapons, shown in the background, in Washington, DC. (OLIVIER DOULIERY / AFP)
He suggested the US government could work with colleges and universities researching AI technology on a “template” for teaching people to be aware of deepfakes.
“One of the things we can do as a federal government is think about, well, what are the things we want to do when we say, ‘Okay, we need to educate people — think critically,’ can we come up with ideas about what that means? Maybe create a template or something that we can share with universities that they can customize,” Ricketts said.
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China has ramped up its investment in AI in recent years. (Image: Chinese President Xi Jinping) (Lintao Zhang/Getty Images)
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He was wary of the suggestion that the federal government could set up its own AI office to train people, citing a bloated bureaucracy, but called on his colleagues to “stay on topic” and try to do as much as possible. learn about the rapidly developing technology.
“I’m always very careful about creating more government bureaucracy, so I’m not sure we want to do that. There are probably places where we can already address this,” Ricketts said. “But I think part of it is just for my colleagues and me to learn about this, and what the possibilities are. And like I said, it moves very fast, so we have to stay on topic.”
Elizabeth Elkind is a political reporter for Fox News Digital.
