Abstract: Complex systems hidden in plain sight often evolve from ordinary, everyday phenomenon (Krakauer 2019). Algorithmic systems, for example, have emerged in elections management within countries and around the world. Elections are competitive spaces designed for leader or issue selection. Voters essentially delegate authority to their elected representatives to govern. Election management would then involve the process of designing and implementing the electoral process by which those representatives are chosen. Election managers have the power to choose whether and what technology to deploy for such tasks as count votes and manage voter registration lists from the county to the federal level in a national election (e.g., U.S. Presidential, Venezuelan national elections). While artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly being used to develop and spread misinformation, disinformation, and cybersecurity threats to disrupt elections, elections managers are also choosing to use AI (e.g., algorithms) to perform tasks in elections management from the local to the national level.
In this seminar, Powers argues that clustered algorithm systems have emerged, are evolving, and are hidden in plain sight within and across countries who use elections around the world. Algorithms populate national and local elections as well as transgress borders when international organizations deploy them in their parliamentary elections (e.g., European Union, Association of Southeast Asian Nations). AI in elections has spread unevenly across the planet. In this historic, global democratic moment in which 50% of countries in the world are holding elections in a single year –2024 and AI in elections management is being utilized at an unprecedented rate, we understand little about the local and global emergent systems of algorithms resulting from fast paced technological innovation, diffusion of new norms, and variation in power locales in electoral processes. The purpose of this project is to document the evolving role of algorithms and other AI in elections management; to illustrate the emergent systems of election management algorithms; and consider the implications for global democracy and elections.
Part of SFI's EMERGENT ENGINEERING SEMINAR SERIES, sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
Speaker
Kathy PowersSFI External Professor & Associate Professor of Political Science at University of New Mexico