Embrace AI – Campaigns Can Better Serve Voters With New Tools

Rapid innovation in artificial intelligence is giving political consultants, public policy chiefs and campaign directors more control, not less, of their messaging and campaign programming for issues and candidates. Embracing the change and getting ahead of this curve will provide more efficient, cost-effective public issues debate and political campaigns. 

This ultimately has the potential for a better-informed electorate. Better stated: “let’s save democracy” by harnessing these technologies now in the midterms. 

The recent warning in The New York Times opinion pages by columnist Thomas Edsall fuels the flames of hysteria about AI in politics.

“For better or worse, artificial intelligence is driving a major upheaval in American politics that will alter the substance and the character of campaigns,” Edsall writes. “A.I. has emerged as a powerful political tool with the potential either to improve the quality of decision-making on Election Day or to do the opposite and subvert the process.” 

The column, which leads with the headline “Political Campaigns Have No Idea What’s About to Hit Them,” misdiagnoses the ultimate outcome for our democracy. While there is a valid fear that AI could be used to subvert deliberation, such a view overlooks the transformative potential of the technology – when applied with ethical rigor – to actually improve the quality of decision-making on Election Day.

That political campaigns are unprepared for the “hit” of artificial intelligence correctly identifies the disruption at our doorstep. But it also gives campaign managers and policy directors scant credit for being able to ride the wave with the support of emerging new technology vendors.

The current political landscape is defined by “noise” – a deluge of generic messaging that often misses the mark of a voter’s true concerns. At Amygdala, the AI intelligence company where I serve as CEO, we believe the solution lies in neural alignment rather than attempts at mass manipulation. By utilizing deep neuroscience-backed algorithms powered by AI and “Voter Digital Twins” – AI replicas of voters – campaigns can move beyond the blunt guesswork of traditional polling and message testing. When we understand the cognitive pathways of the electorate, we don’t seek to “trick” the brain; we seek to speak to it with a clarity that has been missing.

The “hit” we are facing is not an attack on democracy, but the dismantling of an inefficient, 20th-century communication model. If we embrace AI as a tool for deeper human understanding, we will find that the electorate arrives at the ballot box more informed, more connected and more decisive than ever before.

I have personally learned powerful lessons running for office in Wisconsin, where politics can be a blood sport. I lost my election battles but may have won the war. We have discovered that neuroscience and AI together help win elections by cutting through the noise and addressing the issues that voters actually care about.

Rather than the AI boogeyman that is supposed to be coming for political consultant jobs, campaign professionals should take back their power with advanced, neuroscience informed, tools. Focus on strategy and let the neuro-AI do focus groups, message testing, polling, message creation and targeting for you.

Dr. Robert Tatterson is the founder and CEO of the AI-powered intelligence platform Amygdala. He holds his Ph.D. and his M.S. degrees in engineering from the University of Michigan.