Cat Zakrzewski, The Washington Post; This threat hunter chases U.S. foes exploiting AI to sway the election
"Ben Nimmo, the principal threat investigator for the high-profile AI pioneer, had uncovered evidence that Russia, China and other countries were using its signature product, ChatGPT, to generate social media posts in an effort to sway political discourse online. Nimmo, who had only started at OpenAI in February, was taken aback when he saw that government officials had printed out his report, with key findings about the operations highlighted and tabbed.
That attention underscored Nimmo’s place at the vanguard in confronting the dramatic boost that artificial intelligence can provide to foreign adversaries’ disinformation operations. In 2016, Nimmo was one of the first researchers to identify how the Kremlin interfered in U.S. politics online. Now tech companies, government officials and other researchers are looking to him to ferret out foreign adversaries who are using OpenAI’s tools to stoke chaos in the tenuous weeks before Americans vote again on Nov. 5.
So far, the 52-year-old Englishman says Russia and other foreign actors are largely “experimenting” with AI, often in amateurish and bumbling campaigns that have limited reach with U.S. voters. But OpenAI and the U.S. government are bracing for Russia, Iran and other nations to become more effective with AI, and their best hope of parrying that is by exposing and blunting operations before they gain traction."
