Hello, this is Eva and you're listening to the In Between Tech
and Trust podcast. In this week's episode, I talked
to Michael Cohen and Michael is political scientist, founder of
Congress in Your Pocket, which is an app that has been making
US legislative information accessible to everyday for
voters for almost 18 years now. He's also authored the book
Modern Political Campaigns and he's Executive Director of Fight
Hate, which is an organization that's working to combat
anti-Semitism on college campuses globally.
Michael also teaches digital political strategy at John
Hopkins and NYU, which is why he's one of the best persons to
talk to. When we get into the
intersection of how AI is supercharging political content
creation and what it does to a voter's ability to know what's
real, we also talk about micro targeting and how it has
fundamentally changed who campaigns actually talk to and
why. Michael also believes that the
most powerful way to fight online hate is to take the
conversation actually offline. One question that kept lingering
with me after our conversations? The following In a political
landscape that is flooded with AI generated content, how do we
keep authenticity? Or we already passed a point of
where it matters? I invite you to find an answer
for yourself to that question and I hope some further arise
and some are answered are also shared with you.
Hello, Michael, and welcome to the In Between Tech and Trust
podcast. Thank you so much for having me
on. I want to start the conversation
as I do with every guest, because you also come from a
background in technology and politics, and I want to know
your take on trust in that intersection and also what the
first thing is that comes to your mind so.
The first thing that comes to my mind when I think of tech and
trust is really your iPhone. It's the most personal device
you have and it's on us all the time.
We probably touch it more than we touch touch our spouses or
any other human being during the day.
And it's a two way political gateway.
You know, candidates can now reach you directly wherever you
are and you can in turn seek out information or stumble upon it
in your feed again everywhere. But now that ADI has sort of
supercharged that content creation, how how much we know
is real and authentic and worthy of your trust are all things
that are sort of up in play right now.
But again, it all goes back to that connected device that we
carry in our pockets. And now talking about carrying
something in your pockets, you found it Congress in your
pocket, which is perfect, like an introduction to something
that you've been working on heavily.
And you also founded it because you wanted to make the
legislative information accessible and you wanted to
make it accessible in real time. What problem were you trying to
solve and how did it turn out? Well, I, I think this came out
of my own just nerd him. I have a PhD in political
science and mass communication. My dissertation was on Congress.
And so there was a lot of information that I wish I had
for that dissertation that wasn't readily accessible.
I would have loved to have talked to staffers.
I would have loved to have talked to people around the
process that I was studying. And it was, it's very hard to
find that information. I mean, you would have to go to
spiral down notebooks that were basically out of date when after
right after you printed them, you'd have to go and pay premium
services, thousands of dollars a year that you could get on the
Internet. But it was super clunky and it
was even at that price, it was out of date.
And so I felt that voters should really have that access to
information directly. And over time, we built out the
legislative section, which started with members sponsored
and Co sponsored bills. And a few years ago we had
committees and subcommittee membership and staff.
But last January, where we added something that we thought was
really amazing, we added AI bill summaries, which provides real
context for people on what Capitol Hill is working on and
also distills down for people because they're not going to
read 400 to 500 pay bills, which are available online.
And we also offer links to that. But giving them a quick context
check within a summary really does allow people to understand
what is going on in the process, and it does build trust.
Talking about trust, and particularly in the political
context, information somehow has become an infrastructure because
it's also about the provision of transparency, about tangible
impact that politicians do want to have.
And we often assume that access to information strengthens and
democracy. But from your experience, it is
that automatically so? And does that then also create
trust? I think nothing is automatic in
the current world, right, that we're in right now.
I think trust is earned and not given.
I, I think that again, with our AI summaries, we sort of build
trust by building, by breaking down the walls of legalese, you
know, that end up in legislation, which I think is
super helpful. You get to know what's being
proposed and with our widgets, how far along you are in the
process. So if your member says that
they're working on something and you find out that's true, then
that's great, right? And if you find out it's
something that's not true, well, then you have the information to
know that your elected representatives are lying to you
and that destroys trust. But I'm saying that overall it's
good because you can become a more informed voter and act
accordingly. And that helps strengthen
democracy. But I think ultimately what
we're trying to do is to help strengthen trust in democracy
through the information we provide.
Now, how people use use that information is another thing,
and how people are willing to interact with that kind of
information is also another level because just because it
exists doesn't mean that people will use it.
And just because it exists doesn't mean that people will
automatically trust it. I mean, we founded our, you
know, our apps with the first iPhone.
And so we've been around 18 years and we are used by
Democrats, Republicans and independents, people who work on
Capitol Hill and people who work off of it, people who work in
the process and out of it. So I think to a real extent,
we've done a really good job of maintaining sort of neutrality.
We're just providing information.
We're not, you know, summarizing it in a way that frankly gives
it partisan context to one way or the other.
And so I think that that helps build trust as well, so.
With your apps, use it at the intersection of the provider of
information and of the consumer of them as well.
And sometimes the provision does also aim at providing a
particular glimpse into the way of how this information is
consumed. And then also the consumer
coming from a background of context of how they want to
interact with the politician in itself.
Do you think that it has become more crucial to understand of
how to interact with this intersection and what is your
role in balancing navigating that?
That's a really fair question. I think some of the things that
we do is just straight up to provide information, but we also
allow people to sort of interact with us.
And by us, I mean me, I actually answer every single e-mail that
comes to Congress in your pocket personally.
And I've done this now for 18 years and I find that I'm in,
I'm in very interesting conversations with people about
what the information is, how we get it, how much is it updated.
That's actually much more something that they care about
more than really the sourcing or even the the potential bias is
that they just want to be right. And I think that that's a really
interesting opportunity for us. I think one situation that we
ended up in is after January 6th, the riots on Capitol Hill
and the insurrection, we actually published in the app a
marker of people who voted for decertify the election.
And my rationale was that if you were on the right, you wanted to
know this because you wanted to support these people.
And if you were on the left, you wanted to know who they were so
that you could vote them out. And as it turns out, the only
people who were very angry about it were the people on the far
right. I actually got emails from
members of Congress who I won't name.
But you know, guy, it's very heated arguments with people
about I bet you didn't do this when Democrats did this, you
know, years ago for Nancy Pelosi.
And it's just, it went on and on.
And you go down this rabbit hole and I realized, wow, it's really
interesting, like how both sides really do react.
And I'm sure if the situation was flipped, the left would be
coming after me on that as well. But I felt like it was a very
crucial piece of information because if you were evaluating
who you were supporting, again, if you were a primary voter on
the right, you wanted to know that this this person stood with
Donald Trump, right. But on the left, you definitely
wanted to know that too, so that you can target them in elections
and at least, you know, have more information.
And so I thought that it was defensible, but it was also just
sort of an interesting microcosm of how, you know, the side that
felt aggrieved will come after you and then the other side will
be completely silent but happy about it.
And so to a real extent, like I was willing to take the hit up
until the election was done. And so like, once we ended up
after the midterm election where these people were re elected, I
took the information out. Why?
Because it wasn't relevant anymore, right?
People had made their decisions based upon the information that
they had. We moved on.
And so I think it's it's an interesting place that we are
where we are providing factual information and people will get
angry just at the fact that the information is there, even
though it is absolutely true and trustworthy.
And you can check the votes, but you end up in a situation where
you're like, OK, you know, this is the value our brand, this is
the value, you know, our non partisanship.
And I still feel to this day that it was a very defensible
thing that we did. And I don't know that it
would've done a different. Way.
And now that you said that you answer all the emails
personally, that is super interesting.
I think it builds trust. I think it does, you know, to
your point, I think, I think knowing that most of the time
when people go and they interact with a platform or a product or
a service, it goes into this ether of customer service and,
and it's gone and knowing you never hear back from somebody if
you do you think you're getting a bot or you're just getting a
disinterested person. And for me, I wanted them to
know that, look, I'm the founder.
This is a project that I care very deeply about and that
actually builds trust. I think that that has actually
helped me in situations where I've had to navigate with, you
know, people who frankly don't pay us a lot of money.
I mean, it's not a very expensive app.
I mean, it's 10 bucks and it's $10 US.
And so, you know, it's, it's not something that it's a huge
commitment for somebody, but when they do it, they are
committed to it. And whether you're spending
$1.10 dollars or $1000, you want to know that the people who are
behind it are really into it. And and so I think that helps.
And you also teach digital political strategy and also you
offered modern political campaigns.
And if we now go and dive into through the digital campaign,
highlighting now about how you interact with the political
landscape through your apps and so on, what is your experience,
how the political campaigning has changed and also how it has
changed the way trust is built in the political context?
Yeah, I think basically we've moved to digital campaigning.
So the campaigning when I first started in my career was very
analog. You know, we actually hit paper
lists, we would knock on doors. There was only so much you could
really do because advertising was so expensive, particularly
in the state and local levels. But if you were running, you
know, statewide campaigns or national campaigns, you have
plenty of money, but you'd be spending money indiscriminately,
essentially buying big, you know, geographic areas that
weren't hyper targeted to what was going on.
And, you know, a lot of advertising was very irrelevant
to people. And so it's very easy for people
to sort of tune out not being, you know, interested in what was
going on because politicians weren't essentially talking to
them. They were talking to this mass
group of people. And so right now what where we
are is that digital campaign is essentially hyper charged our
awareness of candidates because now they can reach us at scale.
And again, as we were talking about earlier on your personal
devices. So trust is built digitally
through like two things that I say is essentially authenticity
and consistency. And this means that, you know,
is the candidate believable? And then when challenged, do
they remain trustworthy? And we don't expect our
candidates to be perfect, but we do expect them to be real.
And then on the campaign side, the micro targeting of all of
this, you know, it really says that I don't know, I no longer
have to go ahead and spend thousands of dollars on people
who are a knock interested in politics and be not interested
in my candidate at any level. And so you can now discern,
particularly in the United States, with the data that we
have, which voters might be interested in my my messaging
and then target those voters that are most most reachable to
activate and also to persuade so that you don't waste money.
But then you actually end up reaching more people in a more
interesting way. And now with AI, you have a lot
more ability to sort of create content around that.
And then we'll talk more about this and why there can be
pitfalls about it, but to reach smaller and smaller and smaller
groups of people in a much more personal and powerful way.
And to me, I think that's actually a good thing because
what happened in the United States and maybe has happened in
your country as well, as well as around the world.
The way I've seen it from the outside looking in is that
politicians have have sort of doubled down on their bases of
support and they have stopped talking to the other side or
they have stopped talking to those people who are actually
reachable. But now because you can hyper
target and now you can reach people with scale and with
content that can be created rather quickly online, that can
be interesting and powerful, you now have more incentive to reach
out beyond the people that you can just get just by showing up
or just by getting them to show up.
You could now get people who you would normally have said in it
nineties, 2000s and even the twenty 10s that it was just too
expensive. We couldn't afford it talking.
About content does. And if it does, how does
generative AI change the way ethics is infiltrated and
campaigning it actually? Puts much more of a
responsibility on the people that I'm teaching and the people
that I'm trying to work through my own small system.
I teach a course in digital go campaigns over at Hopkins and I
teach a campaigns and international campaigns course
over at NYU this semester actually.
And so my my point of view on this is that as I teach them the
tools, you also need to teach them the responsibility and the
ethics that go along with it. And so to a real extent, the
pressure on campaigns is always to that is the one and singular
goal that every campaign has. It's essentially a a tech
startup that has an end date. And so you have to work within
that structure and within those those needs and with the with
those priorities, right. But also we need to do the thing
that that I keep telling my students is that you have to
give it adult supervision. Yeah, no matter what you end up
getting from AI slop is not just the piece of this.
I mean, you had a great discussion about this with a
previous interviewee that was, I was listening to this morning
while I was working out and it was great to hear you guys talk
about slop. But it's not just slop, not just
like low quality content, it's also disinformation,
manipulative content, content that takes things out of
context. I, I think that there's a lot of
ways that we need to make sure that we teach our students who
are going into this and our young professionals that there
is a line that you will be continuously put up against.
And you need to be able to understand what that line is and
what the consequences of going over that line are, not just for
you, not just for this campaign, but also for the broader
democracy that you, you work in. So what I'm trying to get people
to think about is not just their career or their client, but also
the industry of politics around you.
And that if we devalue what the industry of politics is and, and
we all have a stake in this industry, then that actually
backwards flows towards you, you know, individually and your
can't your opportunities to go and work in this, in this
endeavor. And I think to a real extent,
you know, all this has to be taught.
It has to be reinforced throughout the parties and it
has to be reinforced with people who are owned companies like I
do and then teach those people who are coming up if they didn't
learn it in college and certainly on the job, there is a
real impact to going to the dark side here.
What is the? One thing that you would want to
teach me and my listeners now that we should take away at
exactly what you described of like the industry and also
regarding it as more of a well ecosystem and also our role in
that regard hard so the bottom. Line that I would love people to
take away from would be if it's not real, if it's not authentic
and it's not factual, then don't do it.
Beyond that, everything else is is ancillary and also supportive
because at some level it will either come back to you
physically on your candidate candidate or metaphysically
through devaluing democracy. And that doesn't really help
anybody. And so to me, staying on the
right side of that actually does not only, you know, reinforce
trust and, and trust in democracy, but it also
reinforces trust in your candidate.
It's actually good for you if you do the right thing within
this space. And that's not the same to say
that everybody who does the right thing is always going to
win. But it does mean that when you
do the right things, it eventually will lead to the
right results. And so to a real extent, I think
that that's what I try to teach my students and what I would
hope to the people we're listening here when confronted
with these kind of ethical decisions every day,
particularly on the campaign trail.
Take a step back, take a breath, take a comment and say you know,
is this real, is this authentic and is it factual?
And if I can answer all three correctly, then go.
If you can't, or if one of those 3 or some somewhere on the wrong
side of it, you need to take a step back and you need to think
about what the potential impacts of this are and be truthful with
yourself and with your team now. Bringing tech into that equation
and looking into the way of also how we witness that tech became
more political. And there's also the discussion
around and whether it's politically sitting upstream or
downstream of like the usage of itself.
Would you say that tech is rather a tool in that equation
or is it also influencing the way of authenticity is being
perceived by those who look at the output of someone who's
campaigning for their next also position in the political
environment? We have to.
Understand that these are just tools, right?
Politics is sort of it's a very human enterprise.
And so even though we have AI and when you ask it certain
questions, it will give you very human answers.
You know, we have, we have a friend who's in a tough spot.
He's in the hospital right now. And, you know, I, my wife and I
were talking and I actually went and used Chachi BT to go and,
you know, try and get a sense of like how I should communicate
this, you know, to people and how you, how I should to think
about it. And it comes back with very
human responses. It's, it's a remarkable tool,
but it doesn't negate like the conversation I had with my wife
or visiting him yesterday in the hospital and his and his wife
and being there as a human being.
I, I think that we need to really understand that these are
just tools, OK? These are not replacements for
human beings. You know, whenever we make a
huge leap in in technology, humans automatically think that
we're going to somehow be devalued and that we're going to
go away and that, you know, the technology is going to take away
jobs or take away our value. When I and I think that there is
value in the tools, but there's much, much greater value in the
humans that are using these tools.
And so when you use it, you need to look at it from the
perspective of, you know, this is, this is additional
information, an additional tool that I can use to create or to
understand or to research or to communicate.
But that you're the one who's doing that, that ultimately
you're the one who makes the decision to hit send.
You're the one who ultimately decides to take whatever you
learned and go talk to somebody about it.
You're the one who who looks at all this information and has to
make sense of it and also is responsible for any
hallucinations that comes through the AI.
So you have to make sure you double check everything.
And so I think to a real extent, when you look at all of this,
you have to then put all of it into perspective of that we are
still human beings using tools now.
You're at the epicenter of also combining tech with your work
because you haven't only founded like Congress in your pocket,
but you also work as executive director for Fight Hate.
And you also look into the way of how it's directly
intersecting with combating hate or extremism.
Also the conversations that we have.
Like the political landscape and what role does digital
architecture play in that regard?
And also is there a way of identifying whether it's
amplifying or also decreasing division?
Well, thanks for. Mentioning fight hate.
This has been a thing that I've been associated with now for
about 8 months. First of all, it's an honor and
a privilege to work on these issues.
I'm Jewish and Fight Hate is an organization that works to to
eliminate anti-Semitism on college campuses worldwide.
And we have a number of different campuses all over the
place. And these students are
incredible rock stars. And they are meeting not just
among Jews, but they're also meeting with Muslim students and
with other people of different variations of religion and
ethnicity and color. And the idea here is that we
can't solve this alone. And so from a extremism online
perspective, it's very well documented that extremism online
and hate is self perpetuate, right?
And it's often generated by forces that actually want to
divide us, that have the interest in dividing people.
And because it's easier to conquer, you know, if you
divide, you can conquer, right? And it's an extremely
challenging fight online. And there were some outstanding,
really well funded organizations that are working on this,
including the Blue Square project by Robert Kraft, who is
doing magical work on this. It's very, very hard because it
will never end because AI is made it even easier to spread
this kind of hate. And from my perspective, when I
looked at this project, you know, fight, hey, what was
interesting to me was that they weren't limiting what they were
going to do just online. We have these tools.
How do you use them? And so my point of view is we
only use these digital tools to identify and organize students,
you know, who don't want to live with us.
And this is Jewish and non Jewish students on their
campuses. And eventually, you know,
because if you don't stop it on college campuses, it goes to
their families, it goes to their careers and it goes to their
communities. So like now is really the time
to do it and it really exists so that real people can work
through these issues in offline spaces.
And so I think that when I look at the tools that we have,
sometimes the best way to change that trajectory is to have
conversations offline, whether it's anti-Semitism or
Islamophobia or whatever. The best relationships that we
have are not online. You know, you and I met at a
conference and even though we could have met on LinkedIn or
somewhere else, we met in person.
And I think that that is a different kind of relationship
than when you meet somebody online.
I met a lot of them at this conference that we went to shout
out to the EU, you know, political tech summit, which was
fantastic. Yosef and then the team just
been magical, amazing leaders and and really forward thinkers.
But the magic of it really is, is that you bring people
together. So it's much easier to be mean
to somebody from behind the screen.
It's much more difficult to reconcile that with somebody
you're right in your face, right and who wants to talk to you,
who wants to work through these issues and who wants allies.
And I think that whether you're on the Muslim side of this or
the Jewish side of this or the Palestinian side or the Israeli
side of this, we really do want to sort of build those bridges
offline and using the digital tools that we have to bring
people together. You know, get the word out on,
on events that we're doing, you know, put together messaging
that brings people together that doesn't just fight back, but we
want to fight with allies. We don't.
And to do that, we do use digital tools, but we're not
using, you know, digital tools to try and change people's
minds. We feel that other people are
doing a really good job of that and at scale.
And we feel that the best, you know, work that we can do is on
the ground using the tools that we have and talking.
About tools and also the way of how are they foster
collaboration interactions or not and combining or comparing
that with the interactions that we have in real life.
What role do you see, you see currently taking trust in both
of those spheres, be it online, be it offline, like in light of
fight hate or also in general? And is it being driven by
technology or is it amplified by technology to increase or
decrease the trust that we have mutually?
Yeah, I think. Technology has not been a force
multiplier for trust. I think technology is, I think
it's fair to say after, you know, the past few years since
10/7 and, you know, particularly in the space that I'm working
with, with fight, hey, it has broken levels of trust between
people where we have, I've heard too many stories from my
students where the trust has been broken among friendships
and a lot of it has been generated through online
content. And it's very difficult to fight
back against that. I mean, people, you know, are on
their phones a lot and you know, the algorithm is optimized for
outrageous or hateful content. The stuff that's on top of us,
that's coming through the cloud is really devaluing the trust
that we have among each other. And so we have to fight much
harder. We have to fight the hate
offline together. And that to me is the crux of
the work that I do with fight hate.
And these students who are just fantastic.
They are willing to put themselves out there and to be
yelled at or to be discriminated against.
Any opportunity to somehow reduce the the hate on campus.
It's a really remarkable group of people and whatever they end
up doing and after college, I mean, these are people who are
going to be successful based upon just my own little slice of
their life. And I think that they understand
very clearly that and these are digital natives, that they can't
just fight back online, that that doesn't work right?
That it's much more impactful and powerful to do that offline.
And so to me, that's why I wake up every day feeling very lucky
that I get to do this work and who I get to work do it with.
Whether it's the students or whether it's our lay leaders or
whether it's the support I have for people like Jay Schiffman,
who should be mentioned on this podcast, who founded this after
10-7 and put a lot of his own time and money into it, and one
of the most impressive people I've met also.
Looking into the way of how you now mentioned your work with
your students in general, but then again, you also work with
students to teach them about future campaigning.
And you mentioned, like, NYU and John Hopkins.
But is there something that your students understand about
digital trust that earlier generations didn't?
Yeah. Yeah, they, they really have an
I'm, I'm not going to curse on, on, on your, on your fair
podcast, but they have high BS meters.
They do, but they know what's it's much their authenticity
meters operated exponentially higher than ours do.
They could spot this stuff a mile away and much quicker.
They also get the joke on what is AI and what is it when it's
appropriate and funny and interesting and when it's trying
to be manipulative. And so they really, since they
grew up with this, really understand some of the
subcultures that exist within online and wine digital and
especially digital campaigning. And so to me, like, that's
really great, you know, and they also, but the thing that I'm
concerned about, and I think that they're concerned about as
well, is that things are getting to the point where the
development of AI has become so rapid.
I mean, just in the past year, the quality of the video, the
past 12 months, the quality of the video that we can get
through simple prompts to now is very, very dramatic.
I mean, seeing Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise fight on through AI and
it looks real like it is. It was really hard.
I was looking at this. I'm like, is this a movie that
I'm missing? What's going on here?
And of course, it was, it was AI.
And like, it's getting me. And students are saying, yeah,
you know, it's getting to the point where even they are
starting to be concerned about this.
And so I think to a certain extent, if those people can't
spot it really quickly, then we know we're sort of in trouble.
And so we have to pay much, much more attention to what this is
and how it's being distributed. But they also understand what
works online. I mean, they know what's funny
and interesting and cool, and they also understand what's
cringe. And so you have to pair this
with how I teach. You know, in both classes, they
get clients in the beginning of the semester.
And so like, we don't have standard essays or quizzes or
tests. We have them choose their own
political candidates at the beginning of semester and then
we have them follow through what they, what they want to
construct for their, their candidates.
Now, some of this does include AI.
And so when you, when they start using the tools, they realize
not just conceptually, but also hands on that, Oh wow, I could
do this. It is right, I could and then I
could do that, but it's really cringe, right?
And so to a real extent, they can recognize the content that's
really great online. But once they start using the
tools, they actually understand the limits and also the benefits
of what the tools can do for them.
And then also the ethics around them.
And I think that with all of that, getting them hands on into
a campaign right away that they care about, not me, like they
choose the their own candidates, not me.
It really brings them into the process and really makes it real
for them. And then when they leave my
class, they can take this and show this to a potential
employer and say, hey, look, this is a campaign plan.
We did. This is content that we produce.
This is all the kinds of different things that you would
do in a campaign. They can now show examples of
actual real world work that they would have done for a client had
they had that client. And I think that that changes
how the students look at the tools that we have and also
changes the platforms and the other things that they want to
go ahead and build, right? Because they understand, oh,
wait a minute, you know, I had a chance to work on this in my
class. There's a gap here.
We can go and do this better or wow, there's a really big
problem here. We need to work on a tool that
would mitigate this kind of misinformation or
disinformation. And so I think to a real extent,
putting them in those kinds of roles really does make it much
more interesting for them, and it also makes them better
professionals on the way out. What do younger?
Generations understand differently about ethics and AI
than potentially older ones do, so I think.
Older people right now are much more concerned about AI just
globally, like we all think that, you know, if you were to
ask the olds, the olds would say, oh God, this is going to
kill us all. And this is Terminator kind of
level stuff, you know, just looking for the next shoe to
drop. Students are looking at this as
like, wow, this is kind of interesting.
This is, this is very, you know, how do I get, how do I use this,
you know, to my advantage? How do I use this in my, my
school work? How do I use this in my, my
regular life? They, they look at it as if we
look at it like spell check. Like, do you remember when spell
check happens? You know, when I remember when I
first used spell check on Microsoft Word and I was like,
wow, this is great. I don't need to look up this
word because the squiggly line is telling me that I spelled,
they're wrong, you know, and like, that's amazing, right?
And so now people are saying to themselves, OK, well, how much
do I need to do, you know, with the tools that I have and still
make sure it's still me, right? And so I think that the place
that they're navigating is that because it can create content
from scratch. And it is also a big challenge
from the education standpoint. How much am I getting?
Is AI driven? How much am I are they producing
is AI driven? You know, if you are not a
natural writer, AI is a really interesting lure for you, right?
If you are not a great researcher, you can get your
answers very quickly, and most of them will be right.
Some of them will be wrong. So like we have to teach them
how to use these tools because they're going to use these tools
and they're going to use them at a much more fluent rate then
then we're using them right now. And so like, for example, in my
classes, and I'll tell my students this right now, the
secret sauce to my classes is that now basically a quarter of
your grade is your class participation.
So if I get really great writing from you and I get really
interesting and thought provoking pieces from you or
great content, but you are basically a zombie in class.
Well, it's pretty obvious to me who's doing the work right now.
On the other side. I tell them, hey, there are
certain uses of AI that I encourage you to use, right?
We actually do exercises where you ask them to use AI to
produce content so they can see what it can do or use it for
research on certain topics that are esoterica that they would
never be able to find, right. And then go ahead and double
check that kind of information to make sure it's right.
So I think there's a lot of ways to sort of build trust within
the classroom, build trust within our communities and, and
in our careers and especially in our politics.
And to me, that is, that is what we have to lean into now because
the tools and the digitals are all pushing it back on trust,
right? So we have to lean into trust as
human beings in all phases of what we do so that we can remain
human and remain the kind of people we want we strive to be.
Yeah. And leaning into trust is
exactly like the transition that I want to make now with you,
because I want to lean into some in between moments when I ask
you the first moment to share. And that is, is like trust in
democracy feels like to you. It feels like it's.
Being challenged and. What should in a campaign
technology never do It's. Never replaced into human
judgment and what? Is the real danger of AI?
That's a very interesting question.
I think the real danger of AI is alienation, that we lose trust
in democracy and we lose trust in each other along the way.
What? Do voters need more of they
need? More in person interactions with
the candidates and their tiers. And I think that that that's a,
that's a huge piece of campaigning.
And we still find today that the research does land that point
that if you interact with people is a much more powerful
experience and also a much more persuasive one.
And. Is there a word that you can use
to share if you're currently in between something?
I think. I don't know.
Yeah, this was hard for me. I think the word authenticity is
a word that I find that I grapple with everyday.
How much of what I'm seeing is real?
How much of what I'm seeing is generated, I'm seeing, you know,
in all phases of my life. And I, I think that the what
voters absolutely want, and this is cross cultural and cross
national is they want real and they want authentic, but they
also understand that there's a lot of digital tools now that
are fighting against that because they're easy to use.
And so it actually places a higher premium on authenticity.
But I think that we are struggling with that word right
now and what it means. I think that that's that's
something that we have to reconcile over the next several
years. What a great end to a great.
Conversation. I enjoyed having you as a guest
and thank you so much, Michael for joining the In Between Tech
and Trust podcast. Thank you so much for everything
I. Appreciate it and thanks for
listening everybody.