In determining why Kamala Harris and the Democrats lost so badly in this year’s elections, commentators have blamed various factors but missed several key reasons. Observers have cited the economy, immigration, threats to democracy, anger at elites and President Biden’s delay in leaving the race. These factors are important, but only partial explanations.
As a psychiatric researcher, I have conducted three decades of studies on people’s attitudes, and I see several problems with these analyses, particularly failures to fully appreciate the increasing, unique and powerful uses of AI and social media and their neurological impacts, and the limitations of survey methods to assess these forces.
Social media and AI are particularly well-suited to inciting emotion — especially if they use distortions and lies — and have thus radically transformed American politics.
AI facilitates the sophisticated fabrication of images, videos and voices. Each algorithm also continually learns and hones its abilities to determine which messages to send to whom — gauging what particular words and images get clicked by whom and then altering posts accordingly. AI-enabled emotional recognition and communication have been rapidly improving.
These new technologies thus make politics even more of a blood sport, uniquely provoking raw emotions of fear, hatred and violence, especially for candidates willing to use AI’s full capabilities for distortion. Social media is also replacing the roles of legitimate news services, which were generally committed to fair and balanced reporting. Social media also serves as a Trojan horse, letting Russia and China further undermine democracy.
Harris’s poll support was........