Political Science 398: Cyberpolitics

This volume will explore the latest thinking around the ethics and governance of Artificial Intelligence. Where will robots make the most useful impact in society? As computers become more adept at mimicking human behavior and problem solving, what issues will be solved or created by new forms of artificial intelligence? This volume will explore the scientific, economic, and social implications of advanced artificial intelligence systems in human life.

This edition of Reference Shelf looks at propaganda and misinformation. Social media posts inciting sectarian violence, government-manipulated misinformation campaigns, for-profit fake news headlines, and well-meaning but gullible individuals promoting conspiracies point up the problems with our current media environment. Looking at such issues as Russian election interference, the increasing polarization of media consumption, hacktivism, and the future role AI could play in making fake news more difficult to detect, this volume explores the pollution of our information environment and what we can do about it.

Scientists have now created machines capable of imitating human intelligence and creativity so well that many people around the world cannot tell the difference. In the 2020s, these supercomputing AI tools became available to Americans through services like Chat GPT and Open AI, which enable consumers to tap into the power of this emerging technology for all kinds of activities. This volume of The Reference Shelf looks at the current era in AI technology and the debate about how this emerging technology is changing, and potentially threatening,many familiar parts of human life.

What happens when artificial intelligence saturates political life and depletes the planet? How is AI shaping our understanding of ourselves and our societies? Drawing on more than a decade of research, award‑winning scholar Kate Crawford reveals how AI is a technology of extraction: from the minerals drawn from the earth to the labor pulled from low-wage information workers to the data taken from every action and expression.   Crawford reveals how this planetary network is fueling a shift toward undemocratic governance and increased inequity. Rather than taking a narrow focus on code and algorithms, Crawford offers us a material and political perspective on what it takes to make AI and how it centralizes power. This is an urgent account of what is at stake as technology companies use artificial intelligence to reshape the world.

With the intent of exploring the question 'what is at stake with the use of automation in international conflict in cyberspace through AI?', the chapters in the volume focus on three broad themes, namely: (1) technical and operational, (2) strategic and geopolitical and (3) normative and legal. These also constitute the three parts in which the chapters of this volume are organised, although these thematic sections should not be considered as an analytical or a disciplinary demarcation.

This book examines the shape, sources and dangers of information warfare (IW) as it pertains to military, diplomatic and civilian stakeholders. Cyber warfare and information warfare are different beasts. Both concern information, but where the former does so exclusively in its digitized and operationalized form, the latter does so in a much broader sense: with IW, information itself is the weapon. The present work aims to help scholars, analysts, and policymakers understand information warfare within the context of cyber conflict. Specifically, the chapters in the volume address the shape of influence campaigns waged across digital infrastructure and in the psychology of democratic populations in recent years by belligerent state actors, from the Russian Federation to the Islamic Republic of Iran.

This foundational text examines the intersection of AI, psychology, and ethics, laying the groundwork for the importance of ethical considerations in the design and implementation of technologically supported education, decision support, and leadership training. AI already affects our lives profoundly, in ways both mundane and sensational, obvious and opaque. Much academic and industrial effort has considered the implications of this AI revolution from technical and economic perspectives, but the more personal, humanistic impact of these changes has often been relegated to anecdotal evidence in service to a broader frame of reference.Structured into three parts, the book explores the history of data science, technology in education, and combatting machine learning bias, as well as future directions for the emerging field, bringing the research into the active consideration of those in positions of authority.

Governments and private organizations are grappling with how to develop laws, regulations and rules that will govern the use and functionality of AI systems. This book contains reflections and chapters by a group of more than 40 preeminent AI and legal experts from in-house legal departments and covers a wide range of important topics concerning AI and the law and provides practical advice to attorneys on how to navigate these complex and rapidly evolving issues.