One Day College: Conspiracy Theories, Misinformation, and A.I. in the 2024 Election
Brendan Nyhanand Adam Breuer ’09
One Day College is a full day of immersive, virtual programming to enrich your mind and analyze current events. Learn from Dartmouth professors at the top of their fields about topics critical to the election cycle, from foreign policy to artificial intelligence.
Session Description
The 2024 presidential election is already awash in misinformation and conspiracy theories, which can mislead voters, confuse debates over public policy, and even threaten democracy itself. We will explore the psychological and institutional factors that make people vulnerable to misinformation and conspiracy theories and discuss the merits of different approaches that citizens, journalists, governments, and tech platforms might take to counter them.
An especially important emerging threat comes from artificial intelligence, which can be used to create fake audio and video content and to improve the quality of the content generated by malicious actors. We will discuss the risks associated with AI itself as well as how hype about its capabilities may promote distrust and/or reduce elite accountability via the so-called “liar's dividend.”