A recent webinar, hosted by Bill Gates, the executive director of Arizona State University’s Mechanics of Democracy Laboratory, brought together practitioners and experts to discuss the increasing role of artificial intelligence in elections.
One director’s first experience with AI was inspired by a family member who was an early adopter, leading to the use of ChatGPT to create an outreach plan for a new ranked-choice voting system. Another county official’s interest began after being appointed to a national AI task force where they were impressed by the technology’s capabilities.
Panelists were excited about AI's potential, with one director calling it "employee number 10" in her office. A county clerk/auditor noted that the only limit to AI's use is human creativity, comparing its vast, yet-to-be-discovered potential to using a nuclear power plant to power a toaster.
Despite their excitement, they shared several concerns. One director cautioned that AI is only as good as the information it’s trained on, stressing that human fact-checking is essential to avoid errors from unverified sources. The county clerk/auditor worried that people could lose their critical thinking skills by over-relying on AI. The panel acknowledged that while bad actors can use AI for things like phishing, the technology can also be a powerful tool for defense and anomaly detection. A security expert advised organizations to carefully review the privacy policies of AI tools, as they are not all created equally, and to work closely with their IT departments.
One panelist advised that when introducing AI into the workplace, it's important to be respectful of colleagues who may have philosophical or well-meaning reasons for being skeptical of the technology.
The discussion also highlighted many practical uses for AI. Several panelists shared their experiences with chatbots that can crawl websites to find answers, making them more efficient than older, manually programmed versions. Other AI uses include drafting communications, ballot proofing, scheduling poll workers, and analyzing election system logs.
To help people get started, the panel recommended a gradual approach, beginning with low-risk tasks like drafting emails.
A panelist outlined a good prompt's four key components: a clear goal, user context, specific output details, and past examples. A free resource called the "Elections Prompt Library" was mentioned to help people get started.
AI Tools in Use
The above summary was created using Google Gemini. A file containing the audio from the webinar was uploaded to Gemini’s prompt box. The prompt: “Will you provide a summary of the audio from this webinar?” After the initial text was generated, it was then prompted to provide the summary as a narrative.
The generated text was then reviewed and edited by a human.