Will AI Influence Elections? SURF Student Researcher Aims to Find Out
July 31, 2024
In an election year full of political controversy, it has never been more important to examine how technology intersects with the function of democracy in the United States.
Robert Arellano ’26, an undergraduate student double-majoring in political science and business administration, is addressing the issue head on through a study that examines how artificial intelligence might influence voting choices.
“Artificial intelligence is a very new form of technology,” said Arellano, whose project “Artificial Intelligence: A New Platform to Influence Elections“ is part of Chapman University’s Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship program.
“Programs like ChatGPT, Midjourney and a few others have only been around since 2022. They’re very new technologies and because they’re new, they’re very unregulated. There’s a lot of room for these new technologies to impact certain functions of society, positively and negatively,” he said.