Page 14 - AI Vol 2: Risks of AI

01 D. IMPACTS OF WIDESPREAD AI ADOPTION
It is important to recognize that the impacts of
AI on public agencies will not just be limited to
how agencies themselves chose to deploy (or not)
these systems. As AI begins to proliferate through
society, public agencies will have to learn to adapt
to new challenges these systems bring.
As constituents and parents increasingly turn to
AI systems for information regarding agencies,
policies, and laws, as well as to shape their
understanding of the agency's decisions, reliance
on these systems is expected to rise. Although
the information people receive from LLMs
may be incorrect for any number of reasons
(bad prompting, hallucinations, poor quality
information retrieval), people are primed to
believe that these systems are providing accurate
information, particularly when it comes from
companies they have high confidence in (e.g.,
Google, Microsoft). For example, many people
have come to trust the accuracy of information
obtained from a Google Search result and may
incorrectly assume the information obtained
from a Google Gemini interaction is of equal
quality. It is likely that agencies will begin to
see misinformation spread in their communities
based on shared interactions with LLMs, a fact
that will be further exacerbated by people’s biases
for trusting AI sources.
AI can also be used to spread disinformation
intentionally. This includes things like mass
producing targeted social media posts, voice
cloning systems being used to make it appear
that an official said something they did not, and
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full image or video deepfakes of public agency
officials. As we head into the election season, AI
disinformation is one of the primary concerns
of experts studying the impact of AI on society.
Given AI’s potential to make these disinformation
campaigns easier, we can expect these strategies
to be employed at the local level as well as state-
wide and federal elections. This is particularly
likely as political activists and groups have
increasingly targeted their activism at the local
level, a strategy that first gained prominence
during the COVID-19 pandemic.
It is also possible that as the general public
gains an understanding and acceptance of AI
technology, their expectations about public
agency use of these systems may shift. Currently,
given the attention on hallucinations, bias, and
other problems associated with AI systems, many
communities may be skeptical of any public
agency deployment of AI technology. However,
it’s possible that over time, as AI systems
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