AI driven political campaigns. Are they practical?
Mass campaigns and rallies going virtual with AI
One important event which grants you the opportunity to change the fate and the future of your country is the election. The voters are proud of the power they get to change the whole direction where their country is going.
This whole process of an election is packed with mass campaigns, choosing running candidates, evolving of funds, etc. What the voters crave for is, bestowing their preferred leader with the power who would fulfill their needs. The politicians are analyzing the opportunities and make use of them to be victorious. The technology that helps complement the need of people is Artificial Intelligence (AI).
With the boom of new technologies, people are even looking into electing robots as politicians though it is not a possibility as of now.
This is the time for the politicians to apply AI for their campaigns where it is best suited. Use of public media campaigns and rallies have been the traditional way of meeting voters for ages now. But it is high time to change, and change this approach giving it a technological touch.
The people in healthcare are replaced by robots and the people in motor industry are replaced with self-driven cars. Hence it is wise to apply AI technology for politics as there multiple places where it could be used.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) Algorithm
Artificial intelligence (AI) is the ability of a computer or a robot controlled by a computer to do tasks that are usually done by humans because they require human intelligence and discernment. This is supported by algorithms which are programmed to think like human to do tasks which needs human intelligence. Learning, planning and reasoning are some human talents featuring in AI.
The neural network of AI is interconnected with neurons which happen to be the layers of algorithm. Neurons are changing the importance of input data while it is passing between the layers. The trained neurons attached to various inputs will change continuously until the output becomes close to the desired one. That is when AI became capable of carrying out a specific task.
Machine learning for self-understanding.
It empowers computers to employ a self-learning mode without being programmed. Machine learning either observes an action or goes through files to grasp and learn things.
Machine learning assists the features of AI to learn actions on its own. This will allow the computers to self-learn without being programmed. Going through the files and observing an action enables machine learning to capture and learn new things.
When there is a large volume of data a huge concern is filtering what is required. This could take plenty of time. But machine learning could make things easy by filling the gap and sorting data accordingly. An example is, it could separately select interesting trends from the data file and explore it with the machine learning technology.
Algorithms with AI technology and fluency in machine learning could make predictions. We can analyze the voting patterns of the previous elections with the increase and decrease in the candidates’ popularity using the filtered data.
Data analysis can investigate the preferences of voters on debut, their population ration with the percentage of participation to predict their influence on the election in the current situation for a particular candidate or a party.
Below are some ways how AI is targeting the voters and filtering them.
· Going through the online behavior of the voters such as their data consumption pattern, relationship, social media patterns and unique psychographics and creating a behavioral user profile to each.
· Sending advertisement campaigns to the voters taking their expectations into consideration hence proving that you are the right candidate/party.
· Use of chatbots to interact with supporters using automated programs.
· Automated call generation to create custom greetings by parties.
Alice ran for the presidency in Russia in 2018 and her campaign had the slogan of ‘the president who knows you best.’ She was able to gather a significant number of votes using this strategy.
During the Lok Sabha election, Prime Minister of India , Narendra Modi, used his hologram and conducted virtual rallies attracting thousands of people to various places at the same time. Politicians all over the world are now using social media to target different and large groups of voters conveying them different messages.
Big Data revealing the voters choice
This huge set of data is stored at multiple large scale platforms. It is considered as a valuable asset which helps to generate patterns, trends and association for the extremely large data storage.
Micro-targeting campaigns are gathering the voice and the general perspective of voters and has become the latest trend. Then they could be used to create awareness among the people about the current political issues and they could help the voters to select the right candidate.
The big data for micro-targeting was used by Obama in his election campaign 2012. Following the success of using Big Data in this campaign many countries later observed and adopted this technique. The best example is use of Big Data during the 2014 and 2019 general elections in India where BJP got a sweeping victory over the main opposition party Congress, and other parties like JD(U) and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP)
It should be known that AI in politics could be misused easily as well. It could be used to send fake political messages as you know the political, behavioural and psychographic profiles of voters. The political consulting firm, Cambridge Analytica was accused of influencing Trump among voters that eventually led him to victory.
It’s visible that AI features including machine learning, big data, chatbots and automated calls are turning the political race towards automation. But it is up to the political parties and their leaders to use it in a proper way to gain trust and vote from the citizens.
