SPECIAL EPISODE: AI, Propaganda and Democracy: Inside a Groundbreaking Discovery by Vanderbilt Researchers

Political propaganda and artificial intelligence–driven misinformation are infiltrating social media accounts, and Americans need to do something about it. That’s the warning revealed in research from two Vanderbilt professors and discussed on this special episode of the Quantum Potential podcast.

The researchers explain their breakthrough red flag discovery and how they uncovered evidence of a state-sponsored company in China that is deploying sophisticated, AI-driven propaganda campaigns and profiling U.S. political figures.

Brett J. Goldstein, research professor of engineering and special advisor to the Chancellor on national security and strategic initiatives (Vanderbilt University)

Brett J. Goldstein is a research professor who leads the Wicked Problems Lab at the Vanderbilt University Institute of National Security and is a former Pentagon official. Brett V. Benson is an associate professor of political science and a faculty affiliate at the Institute of National Security who uses models to study some of the world’s most complex security challenges.

Brett V. Benson, associate professor of political science (Vanderbilt University)

Goldstein and Benson talk with Vanderbilt provost C. Cybele Raver about the growing threat of AI-driven propaganda and the warnings they wrote about in a guest essay in The New York Times, “The Era of A.I. Propaganda Has Arrived, and America Must Act.”

Listen and subscribe to the Quantum Potential podcast, available now wherever you get your podcasts. For more information about Quantum Potential, go to vanderbilt.edu/quantumpotential.

Brett V. Benson, associate professor of political science, Provost C. Cybele Raver, and Brett J. Goldstein, research professor of engineering and special advisor to the Chancellor on national security and strategic initiatives (Vanderbilt University)