Takeaways from webinar about EU Elections
SAPIE along with Confederation of Industry in the Czech Republic organised a webinar that focuses on various aspects of how generative content produced by AI systems can interfere into electoral processes. Given that 2024 is a worldwide super election year and with several experiences from recent elections, there is a growing concern that AI generated content will be mis-used to spread misleading and even deceptive information. Online discussion tried to explore various ways how we can mitigate potential risks.
Discussion featured Ivan Štefanec and Ondřej Kovařík, members of European Parliament, Júlia Schvarcová, Government Affairs and Public Policy Manager at Google and Katie Harbath, Chief Global Affairs Officer, Duco Experts.
Some key takeaways include:
we contribute to decline of trust if we assume that everything generated by AI is false, there are risks that we need to address but also significant potential benefits of AI, including in supporting content moderation and efforts to fight against disinformation
we haven’t seen full potential of AI yet, we need to do more deep dive analyses of future impact of AI on societies & politics,
usage of AI tools to create misinformation content is a great challenge and we need to set up effective implementation of regulatory framework to tackle this challenge,
there is a need to deeper analyse usage of AI in electoral processes and have regular experts’ discussion on this complex topic,
platforms are already actively working with public institutions to promote authoritative information about electoral processes,
in Europe, we adopted a complex regulatory framework of digital phase, now national governments with support from the European Commission need to focus on its implementation = key issue is how to secure appropriate capacities, in particular expert workforce,
new European Commission should focus its priorities in digitization on harmonisation of implementation rules among national governments, removing existing barriers to secure common market in digital sphere, increasing public investment into R&D, attracting private investments, increasing digital literacy among citizens, building a strong transatlantic partnership in a digital sphere, to name few.
This webinar was organised with the kind support of our partners: Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE), League for Digital Boost and HOPERO.