Mass campaigns and rallies are turning virtual with AI

Elections are people's chance to change the nation's fate. Voters believe that they are at a stage to exercise the right with a single press to bestow the leader they vouch for. Voters feel proud to be the power that chooses the fate of the country.

But things don't end there. An election is packed with mass campaigns, choosing running candidates, evolving of funds, etc. However, voters have only one perspective in mind, to elect someone who can fulfil their call. To keep up with the people's expectation, political leaders are looking at ways to utilize the opportunity and turn it as a victory. The mediator that helps complement the need of people is Artificial Intelligence (AI).

The modern era is emerging with new technologies. Civilians have gone to the extent of looking at possibilities to elect robots as politicians. But that is far from possible now. The present is the time for politicians to take the AI call and act accordingly. For ages now, politicians were used to meeting voters in person through public media campaigns and rallies. However, these are not going to help at a high level as politicians ought to switch and change their way of approaching with the technological swift.

AI is already slowly replacing humans in healthcare by assistance robots and motor industry through self-driven cars. Henceforth, using AI in politics is not a bad idea. This industry is vast and has a variety of avenues for implementation.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) Algorithm

Artificial intelligence is a wide-ranging branch of computer science concerned with building smart machines capable of performing tasks that typically require human intelligence. AI is aided by algorithms that are programmed to think like humans and do works that ordinarily involve intelligence. AI also features human talents like learning, planning and reasoning.

AI has a neural network that is interconnected with layers of algorithms called neurons. Neurons are a set of inputs or an activation function trained to carry out specific tasks by changing the importance credited to the input data while it passes between the layers. The trained neurons attached to different inputs will continue to be varied until the output of the neural network is very close to what is desired. This is when AI reached a stage where it could carry out a particular task.

Machine Learning for self-comprehension

Machine learning is an amazing application of AI that aids its features to learn actions on its own. It empowers computers to employ a self-learning mode without being programmed. Machine learning either observes an action or goes through files to grasp and learn things.

When a large volume of data acts as a primary source, the problem is that the data needs to be filtered. The task might look lengthy. Machine learning could fill in the gap and sort the data according to whatever sections we need. For example, it can segregate interesting trends from the data file and let us explore it with the machine learning technology.

By educating machine learning and adding AI technology to the algorithms help make predictions about something. The filtered data can even differentiate and analyse the past voting patterns with the increase or decrease in the candidates' popularity. Data analysis can unravel preferences of first-time voters, their population ratio along with the percentage of participation to predict vote share in the current given situation for the candidate or the party.

Some ways that AI targets the voters and filters them

• Analyzing the online behaviour of voters including their data consumption pattern, relationship, social media patterns and unique psychographics to create a behavioural users profile.

• Send advertisement campaigns to voters depending on their expectations to prove that the party can fulfil their presumptions.

• Automated calls are generated to create custom greetings by parties.

• Chatbots function to interact with supporters using automated programs over the internet.

A candidate named Alice contested in 2018 Russian Presidential Election. Her campaign voiced a slogan that said 'the president who knows you best.' She secured a couple of thousands of votes using the strategy.

Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, used a hologram of himself to do virtual rallies at several places during the Lok Sabha election. This attracted thousands of people at different places simultaneously. It is not just Modi who adopted the technique. Politicians across the globe are now using social media channels to target large and diverse groups of voters with different messages.

Big Data reveals the voter's preference

Big Data is a huge set of data that is stored at multiple large scale platforms. Big data is considered as an asset as they help generate patterns, trends and association for the extremely large data storage.

Micro-targeting campaign is the new trend that emerged out of big data. It involves gathering information about the general voice and perspective of voters. Later, the micro-target helps educate voters on various political issues and aid them to make up their minds about a certain candidate. The feature can deliver information of voters interest to persuade him/her. Big data for micro-targeting was used during the Presidential election campaign by Obama in 2012.

Following the 2012 US presidential election using big data to campaign on voters, the technique observed wide adoption by many countries. Big data played a major role in 2014 and 2019 general election in India bringing a sweeping victory for BJP. Main opposition party Congress, and other parties like JD(U) and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) are also utilizing the applications of artificial intelligence.

But there are chances that AI in politics might be misused. By knowing the political, behavioural and psychographic profiles of voters, AI can be used to send insincere and fake political messages. Earlier, Political consulting firm, Cambridge Analytica (now defunct) was accused of influencing Trump among voters that led to his victory.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) features like machine learning, big data, chatbots and automated calls are a breakthrough technology that turns political race towards automation. However, the parties and leaders should use it in a proper way to gain trust and vote from citizens.