AI generated responses are a disservice to democracy
For those who don’t know, I am 31 years old, a Millenial, and despite my age, I absolutely hate AI.
Yes, I understand it is here to stay, for at least the foreseeable future. Yes, I understand things like spellcheck can be considered AI. And yes, I understand there are times when it can be useful.
But when I literally received a screenshot of a ChatGPT from a political candidate in response to a question for our weekly election series, my blood pressure boiled more than when my beloved Boston Red Sox make a dumb error.
Yes, this actually happened.
Dodge County residents and voters should be relieved that none of your candidates have sent a screenshot of their AI written response.
This was for our sister paper, the Steele County Times. I coordinate their election coverage — including our weekly election series — just like I do for the DCI.
The question this week was probably the most simple question you could think of: Why should voters pick you in November?
The candidate for office sent his response: A screenshot of ChatGPT. The candidate didn’t even bother to copy and paste it into a word document, or into an email.
I know I can be unreasonable sometimes, but I would think anyone who wants to run for political office should be able to answer a simple question without using AI. Especially when it is as simple as why people should pick you.
With that said, I asked ChatGPT a simple question. How often do political candidates ask you to write campaign responses?
This is what it had to say:
Quite often. Candidates and campaign teams commonly ask for help with things like:
- Candidate bios and “why I’m running” statements
- Responses to questionnaires from newspapers or civic organizations
- Campaign website copy
- Speeches and talking points
- Social media posts
- Answers to voter questions
- Debate preparation
- Editing drafts to sound more natural or concise
I am a taxpayer. My wife and I own our own home. We hope to raise our family in our home, and look forward to seeing our city and community grow.
Finding out that according to ChatGPT, it is common for candidates to ask ChatGPT to answer questions for the newspaper, for debate preparation, for answers to voters questions, and other things, is quite alarming.
Think about this: each voter is taking a chance on someone, who will then have a percentage of responsibility for millions of dollars’ worth of budgets, for the future of our state, for the future of our communities, and for the school board, the future of our kids.
We should all be asking our candidates for public office to answer questions honestly — and without using AI.
While I may not agree with this, it is somewhat different to use AI to help polish an answer after a human does the research and writes up a response. I get paid to write for a living. Not everyone does.
But that is a far cry from just having AI write a response for you.
We have no concrete evidence — at this time — if there are any other candidates who have been using AI to respond to our election series questions.
Moving forward, I am considering putting responses through an AI detection tool to determine the percentage it determines was written by AI.
This will help us know if we should put in place a policy on accepting 100% AI-generated submissions.
There is a big difference between using AI to help write a sentence or two — or using AI assistance to help edit some sentences — and having AI write an entire response.
But I hope we don’t have to get to that point.
I am calling on candidates to not use AI to write responses to the questions we ask during the election series — and if they choose to — then they should be honest with voters — and let them know they are using it to write their answers.
Candidates who choose to use AI to write their responses should put at the top of their submission: “Generated by AI.”
If there is nothing to hide — if voters don’t care — then there should be no reason to hide using AI.
This goes for anyone who writes letters to the editor or other items for this newspaper.
I hope voters will also urge their candidates for office to also respond honestly in their own words — and not rely on AI to do their jobs for them.