election interference
The U.S. Spies Who Sound the Alarm About Election Interference
The Intelligence Community Campus-Bethesda, a vast office complex covered in vertical panels of maroon siding and mirrored glass, sits on a cliff overlooking the Potomac, surrounded by a forty-acre lawn and a tall wrought-iron fence. Roughly three thousand employees of various United States spy agencies work there. About two dozen of them are assigned to the Foreign Malign Influence Center--the command hub of the battle to protect the Presidential election from manipulation by foreign powers. The center, which opened in 2022, is responsible for deciphering, and defeating, surreptitious efforts to rig or tilt the American vote. The October before an election is the busy season.
The Election-Interference Merry-Go-Round
In October, 2020, Bob Ferguson, the attorney general of Washington State, launched an initiative to combat "election interference." A press release noted Donald Trump's repeated claims that the coming election would be "rigged" against him, leading many of Ferguson's constituents to fear that the result was being delegitimized in advance. In response, Ferguson pledged to defend "the longstanding American tradition of a peaceful transition of power." This year, Ferguson ran for governor of Washington, as a Democrat. So, too, did Bob Ferguson, and Bob Ferguson.
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Elon Musk blasts Google over omission of Trump assassination search suggestions
'The Big Weekend Show' co-hosts discuss Vice President Kamala Harris' positions on key issues. Billionaire Elon Musk suggested that Google's omission of search functions for the assassination attempt against former President Trump may be improper. Musk took to social media to highlight that Google Search's autocomplete feature omitted results relating to the July 13 shooting. Google has denied taking any action to limit the results. "Wow, Google has a search ban on President Donald Trump." "They're getting themselves into a lot of trouble if they interfere with the election," he wrote in a follow-up post.
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'Wildly out of control': DC resident rips new tech as others cite fears over election interference, job loss
Americans in the nation's capital shared their biggest concerns about artificial intelligence, citing fears about election interference and job security. WASHINGTON, D.C. – Americans in the nation's capital told Fox News their biggest concerns about artificial intelligence, with some saying they were afraid the rapidly advancing tech could lead to voter manipulation during the 2024 election cycle or eliminate jobs. "When things like that have too much control … the power to swing is too far," Cori, of Washington, D.C., told Fox News. "I do think that its gotten wildly out of control." AI's rapidly growing tech has consistently raised concerns about its ability to manipulate elections and eliminate jobs.
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Supreme Court chief justice report urges caution on use of AI ahead of contentious election year
Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com. With a wary eye over the future of the federal courts, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts warned Sunday of the perils of artificial intelligence (AI) when deciding cases and other important legal matters. His remarks came in the annual year-end report issued by the head of the federal judiciary, which made no mention of current controversies surrounding his court, including calls for greater transparency and ethics reform binding the justices. Noting the legal profession in general is "notoriously averse to change," Roberts urged a go-slow approach when embracing new technologies by the courts.
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Microsoft releases AI tool for photorealistic copying of faces and voices
Microsoft announced its latest contribution to the artificial intelligence race at its developer conference this week: software that can generate new avatars and voices or replicate the existing appearance and speech of a user – raising concerns that it could supercharge the creation of deepfakes, AI-made videos of events that didn't happen. Announced at Microsoft Ignite 2023, Azure AI Speech is trained with human images and allows users to input a script that can then be "read" aloud by a photorealistic avatar created with artificial intelligence. Users can either choose a preloaded Microsoft avatar or upload footage of a person whose voice and likeness they want to replicate. Microsoft said in a blog post published on Wednesday that the tool could be used to build "conversational agents, virtual assistants, chatbots and more". The post reads: "Customers can choose either a prebuilt or a custom neural voice for their avatar. If the same person's voice and likeness are used for both the custom neural voice and the custom text to speech avatar, the avatar will closely resemble that person."
The Download: capturing carbon with seagrass, and China's election interference
For years, Tidal, a project within Alphabet's "moonshot factory" X division, has been using cameras, computer vision and machine learning to get a better understanding of life beneath the oceans, including monitoring fish off the coast of Norway. Now, MIT Technology Review can report, Tidal hopes its system can help preserve and restore the world's seagrass beds, accelerating efforts to harness the oceans to suck up and store away far more carbon dioxide. The project's ambitious mission is to improve our understanding of underwater ecosystems in order to inform and incentivize efforts to protect the oceans amid mounting threats. It could also provide crucial answers to the many questions hanging over seagrass' role in both sucking up carbon and regulating the climate. China is copying Russia's election interference playbook China is increasingly interfering in US politics by getting its agents to create social media accounts posing as American citizens, according to research co-led by Renée DiResta, the technical research manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory, who has studied foreign influence on social media for years.
Majority worry about 2020 foreign meddling in U.S. election: AP-NORC poll
WASHINGTON - A majority of Americans are concerned that a foreign government might interfere in some way in the 2020 presidential election, whether by tampering with election results, stealing information or by influencing candidates or voter opinion, a new poll shows. The poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds Democrats far more likely to express the highest level of concern, but Democrats and Republicans alike have at least some concerns about interference. Overall, half of Americans say they're extremely or very concerned about foreign interference in the form of altered election results or voting systems, even though hackers bent on causing widespread havoc at polling places face challenges in doing so. An additional quarter is somewhat concerned. Similarly, about half are very concerned by the prospect of foreign governments influencing political candidates or affecting voters' perceptions of the candidates, along with hacking candidate computer systems to steal information.
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Google CEO Sundar Pichai bound for Washington as Trump takes aim at search engine
Google CEO Sundar Pichai delivers the keynote address at the Google I/O 2018 Conference at Shoreline Amphitheater on May 8, 2018, in Mountain View, Calif. Google's two day developer conference runs through May 9, 2018. SAN FRANCISCO -- Rebuked by lawmakers and slammed by President Trump, Google is on the political hot seat -- and its CEO is headed to Capitol Hill to make peace. Earlier this month, Sundar Pichai didn't show up to a congressional hearing on state-sponsored election interference; top execs from Facebook and Twitter did. In a public scolding, the Senate Intelligence Committee left an open chair to spotlight Pichai's absence.
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Donald Trump says it is 'unfair' to blame Russia for election interference
Donald Trump has expressed continued skepticism over whether Russia was responsible for computer hacks of Democratic Party officials. In remarks to reporters upon entering a New Year's Eve celebration at his Mar-a-Lago estate, Trump warned against being quick to pin the blame on Russia for the hacking of US emails. "I just want them to be sure, because it's a pretty serious charge," he said. "And if you look at the weapons of mass destruction, that was a disaster, and they were wrong." The Washington Post also reported on Friday that Moscow could be behind intrusion into a laptop owned by a Vermont electricity utility.
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