The Coming Automation of Propaganda - War on the Rocks

Every solution will be painful. Consequently, we don’t expect that regulators will take any significant steps in the directions outlined above until the effects of machine personas become undeniable. It is the responsibility of both the U.S. government and Silicon Valley to ensure that the American public is aware of this threat so that policymakers have the necessary political capital to take action. The public should also be prepared for the possibility that malign actors will put their thumbs on the scale to the benefit of one political entity over another, so they should have a united voice in rejecting anti-democratic interference. The Internet may already be past the era of speculation about the problem and in the age of persistent machine interference. To protect both it and democracy, the American public needs to begin these conversations in earnest.