HNUH248O

Artificial intelligence (AI) has had profound impacts on the modern political landscape, in the US and abroad. From political campaigns powered by AI-driven audience microtargeting to AI-powered bots that influence public discourse to animosity incentivized by algorithmic content curation, AI has changed how politicians engage with the public, revealed new societal vulnerabilities, and exacerbated longstanding social ills. At the same time, these technologies empower new voices and engagement in political processes. This course encourages the critical evaluation of how AI has impacted political behavior and opened new threats like foreign electoral inference, disinformation, and manipulation through deep-fakes and generative language models. Through an exploration of key dimensions and challenges around the use of AI in political processes and methods to cope with these challenges, students will debate AI governance and frameworks for ethical, fair, transparent, and accountable AI.