The AAAI 2023 Second Workshop on AI for Credible Elections: A Call To Action with Trusted AI

February 14, 2023 (Event Summary, Photos, Video)

Program ALL TIMES in EST

Morning Session -I (AM)

9:00 Welcome

9:10 Invited Talk 1: Prof. Anupam Joshi, University of Maryland Baltimore County, USA. Shaping Opinion and Influencing Elections through Narratives [35 mins]

Abstract: There has been a significant body of work that explores "misinformation" or "disinformation" in the media. Research has explored how to identify misinformation, and how it spreads or goes viral. When detected, individual pieces of misinformation can be debunked. However, there is evidence that state actors (and others) are starting to launch more sophisticated information operations that try to craft a narrative that will shape public opinion. This involves combining factual information/hard news with opinions and potentially small elements of disinformation to persuade people, particularly in open societies typically found in democracies. While such influence building operations have been a tradition in statecraft, the ability to spread information fast provided by social media, and the removal of gatekeepers from the more traditional media sources, have provided a new potency to this approach. In this talk, we'll talk about disinformation, how easy it is to generate plausible "facts" in the era or Large Language models, and narrative constructions. We'll also describe our recent work in creating computational approaches that might detect when a narrative is being constructed.

09:45 Panel discussion A: Securing infrastructure for credible elections [45 mins]
Moderator: Prof.Anita Nickolich, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, USA; Panelists - Uwe Serdült, University of Zurich, Switzerland; Dr. Jeremy Epstein, NSF, USA; Ashish Kundu, Cisco Research, USA

10:35-11:00 COFFEE BREAK

Morning Session - II (AM)

11:00 Panel discussion B: Elections and technology: empowering people [45 mins]
Moderator: Prof. Biplav Srivastava, University of South Carolina, USA; Panelists - Dr. Neeta Verma, Election Commission, India; Prof. Dan Wallach, Rice University, USA; Dr Deepak P, Queen's University, Belfast, N. Ireland

Reviewed Paper - Talks Session A

11:45 Talk 1: Alapan Kuila and Sudeshna Sarkar, "If you build they will come": Identification of News-Stakeholders to Detect Party Preference in News Coverage

12:00 Talk 2: Prasath Murugesan and Shamshu Dharwez Saganvali, An AI-Powered VVPAT Counter For Elections In India

Morning session - wrap-up

12:30-14:00 LUNCH BREAK

Afternoon Session -I (PM)

14:00 Invited talk 2: Prof. Nicole Goodman, Director, Centre for e-Democracy, Munk School of Global Affairs, Toronto, Canada. When digital elections go wrong and how to stop it [30 mins]

Summary: This talk is about digital elections and when they do go wrong. How Canada has tackled risks to ensure successful digital elections. Major issues about digital elections are discussed and shown how it affected satisfaction, orientations toward the voting mode etc. Strategies can be developed from the digital elections' data to mitigate the risks. The role of public opinion and how to enhance the integrity of digital elections.

Reviewed Paper - Talks Session B

14:30 Talk 3: Khurram Yamin, Nima Jadali, Yao Xie and Dima Nazzal, Novelty Detection for Election Fraud: A Case Study with Agent-Based Simulation Data

14:45 Talk 4: Samiran Gode and Supreeeth Bare, Understanding Political Polarisation using Language Models: A dataset and method [Paper]

15:00 Talk 5: Bharath Muppasani, Vishal Pallagani, Kausik Lakkaraju, Shuge Lei, Biplav Srivastava, Brett Robertson, Andrea Hickerson and Vignesh Narayanan, On Safe and Usable Chatbots for Promoting Voter Participation [Paper]

15:15 Talk 6: Deepak P, Stanley Simoes, Muiris MacCarthaigh, AI and Core Electoral Processes: Mapping the Horizons

15:30 Session wrap-up

15:30-16:00 COFFEE BREAK

Afternoon Session - II (PM)

16:00 Invited talk 3: Prof. Dr. Marcos Antonio Simplicio Junior, Escola Politécnica, Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil, Electronic Voting in Brazil: Existing security mechanisms and what could be better [40 mins]

Abstract: Brazil has been using electronic voting machines for national elections since 1996. In more than 20 years, the voting machine and the surrounding procedures have evolved in many aspects, in particular regarding its ability to fend off external attackers and to overcome failures. The auditability of the system, on the other hand, has been often questioned by the technical community: since Brazil adopts Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) machines, where the votes are stored only in electronic form, much of its security relies on the correctness of the underlying software developed by the national elections authority. This talk describes the security mechanisms currently in place for Brazilian elections, as well as possible points of improvement. It also discusses how reasonable arguments aimed at enhancing the system have been recently hijacked by political figures, and then turned into far from reasonable allegations of fraud in the 2022 elections.

16:40 Panel discussion C: How can AI help Journalists covering elections? [45 mins]
Moderator: Prof. Andrea Hickerson, U. Mississippi, USA; Panelists - Prof. Sagar Samtani, Indiana University, USA; Maurice Turner, Turner Consulting, USA; Dave Levinthal, Raw Story, USA

17:25 Closing remarks

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