Policy Currents | The newsletter for policy people
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** Sept. 5, 2024
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Social Media Manipulation in the Era of AI
Last month, OpenAI announced that it had disrupted a covert Iranian influence campaign that was using its software, ChatGPT, to spread disinformation online. This came less than two months after the U.S. Justice Department took down a large network of AI-created bots that were spreading Russian propaganda.
Iran and Russia are not alone. China, too, is exploring AI-enhanced social media manipulation.
A recent RAND paper examines how Beijing's use of powerful generative AI may pose a potential national security threat. China is a particularly useful case study, the authors say, because its disinformation efforts seem to be growing bolder and more sophisticated.
Mitigating this threat won't be easy, but there are some actions that could help. For example, social media platforms could redouble their efforts to identify, attribute, and remove fake accounts. Media companies and other legitimate content creators could develop digital watermarks or other ways to show that their pictures and videos are authentic. And federal regulators could consider requiring social media companies to verify users' identities, much like banks do.
But these steps will require time and trade-offs. That's why skeptical social media users may still be the best defense against AI-generated disinformation. "We have to assume that AI manipulation is ubiquitous," said RAND's Nathan Beauchamp-Mustafaga. "It's proliferating, and we're going to have to learn to live with it."
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Equity and Social Policy: Q&A with Jessica Welburn Paige
RAND's Jessica Welburn Paige is a social scientist who studies questions of race and inequality. Her recent research has shown that Black Americans are more likely to fall out of the middle class than white Americans; that disaster recovery too often overlooks low-income communities of color; and that suicide-risk algorithms may single out racial- and sexual-minority youth. "I really want answers and solutions for people who have been essentially deprived of the full rights of American citizenship," Paige said. "That's really what drives my work at RAND."
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New Solutions for America's Drinking Water Quality Problems
Access to safe drinking water is still a problem in many communities. Several U.S. cities are struggling to meet current water quality standards because of a range of challenges, including increasing complexity of treating water, lack of funding, and management failures. It's time for new approaches, say RAND's Sara Stullken and Rebecca Tisherman. They highlight three keys: repairing U.S. water infrastructure; creating a regulatory framework that can keep pace with the growing number of contaminants (and their sources); and establishing a federally funded and connected water quality monitoring system.
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** RAND Recommends
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- The United States now views North Korean denuclearization as a "mission impossible," RAND's Bruce Bennett told Voice of America. "It is fair to say that the U.S. government is now more focused on deterrence, which is largely succeeding."
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- In an interview with The Cipher Brief, RAND's Michael Bohnert discussed Ukraine's Kursk invasion and what the Russian military looks like today.
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- For help with sleep, try "skills, not pills," says RAND's Wendy Troxel. People are increasingly turning to sleep medications, such as melatonin, but it's the "boring habits," like avoiding caffeine after noon, that often make a difference.
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** Events
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Policy Lab: New Evidence for the Effects of U.S. Gun Policies
Thursday, September 26, 2024 (Online)
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