Have you seen those orange cat videos ? The ones where an orange cat goes around doing mischievous things or the bigfoot blog, in which Bigfoot gets drunk on a hikers beer? We laugh when we come across these AI videos. Never thinking further about the implications of such a technology in a country like India where tech literacy is rarer than a voter who knows the difference between legislative and the executive.
Indian Elections and Social Media
Indian elections are drummed up to be a great celebration of ‘Democracy’, a sort of thunderous applause for logistical greatness of the Indian election machinery. What we do not talk about is the fundamental absence of sense. Now if you mix AI within that setup, it’s a dangerous cocktail. We have already seen political parties using AI on social media. Lip sync videos of famous politicians across the world, Baby avatars of Political leaders and many other instances of such silliness.
AI doesn’t mean cute puppy videos, it also means the age of the puppy, the color of the coat , facial expression and movement is tailored to the user’s niche. The puppy rule can be applied to any other product as well. In this case, your political beliefs and ideals will be predetermined by how you interact with content on the internet along with a million other data points.
Let’s take an example, you are from Bihar and you are a first time voter. Instead of teaching you the history of Bihar and the political violence that engulfed and bankrupted the state, you will be forced to equate your identity of Bihar with only Bhojpuri reels and byte-sized ‘manoranjan’. Your feed will be constantly bombarded with pro left or pro right messaging to the point you won’t be able to distinguish truth from the ‘subjective truth’ as they call it. That is the narrative and misinformation aspect of AI integration into political machinery.
AI and The Unaware Indian
This technology can also be leveraged to make people say things , they did not say. Deepfakes can be easily made and widely circulated. For a country which is still losing millions every year from ‘digital arrest‘ and ‘digital scams’. It could spell doom.
Imagine someone creates a dynamic deepfake which uses your gallery as the source and creates videos asking for money or votes. Which are then sent to your WhatsApp. You would think your Jaipur Wale Mamaji is passionately asking you to vote for a party in one video and then you see the same Mamaji is asking 10 lakhs urgently from your father. Which is to be sent within the hour to a friend’s account for a medical emergency.
AI Driven Violence
Like all things in India, these things will not be limited to the digital realm. Deepfake videos or AI generated material can and will cause detrimental lived experiences. An Artificial Intelligence Deepfake of a Muslim cleric or a Hindu Priest can rouse huge religious riots. Change the perception of reality for especially the chronically online generation who will be voting in the future. It can give rise to radicalism on a scale that is unprecedented. All of which are huge issues for a country as diverse as India.
The implications for AI don’t stop here. It also creates a huge pain point for the enforcement of law and order. If a criminal uses an AI avatar to create a fake human. Get their Aadhar and Pan made and if they can do this on a grand scale, they will be able to do so much damage to the PDS that many politicians would be out to shame.
Does all this mean, we are doomed ? No. What we need is codification of directives as to how and in what capacity AI can be implemented. More importantly, ECI and GOI should invest heavily in increasing digital awareness among citizens. If we as a country are more technically literate and can learn to recognize the patterns, IT can also be a boon for us. AI can inform citizens about their welfare schemes and also remind them to take their rations or connect them to the government representatives across the board. Like any new technology, AI gives a choice. It is us who will decide whether it’s a boon or a bane.
