They’ll Use AI to Undermine Elections. We Must Use It to Defend Them.

Authoritarians won’t need to steal elections. They’ll just use AI to steal your belief that the results were real in the first place.

Photo by Susan J. Demas

By Trygve Olson

This is the fifth article in a seven-part series: AI vs. Autocracy: Seven Lessons in the New Battle for Democracy.

In the early 2000s, I worked in places where elections were already broken, at least by Western standards.
Belarus. Zimbabwe. Azerbaijan. Georgia.

I saw ballots that never got counted.
Opposition leaders ja…