Whistleblower calls for government transparency as Congress digs for the truth about UFOs

A congressional subcommittee on unidentified anomalous phenomena met to hear testimony from military officers. Sarah Silbiger/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Chris Impey, University of Arizona

A congressional subcommittee met on June 26, 2023, to hear testimony from several military officers who allege the government is concealing evidence of UFOs. By holding a hearing on UFOs – now called “unidentified anomalous phenomena” by government agencies – the subcommittee sought to understand whether these UAPs pose a threat to national security.

I’m an astronomer who studies and has written about cosmology, black holes, exoplanets and life in the universe. I’m also on the advisory council for an international group that strategizes how to communicate with an extraterrestrial civilization should the need ever arise.

While the hearings brought attention to UAPs and could lead to more reporting from people who work in the military and aviation, the testimonies did not produce evidence to fundamentally change the understanding of UAPs.

An audience member at the hearing wears an ‘X-Files’ UFO pin. AP Photo/Nathan Howard

UFO oversight so far

The House subcommittee hearing follows a flurry of activity over the past few years. Public interest in UAPs surged in 2017 after three Navy videos were leaked and The New York Times reported on a shadowy UAP program run by the Pentagon. In June 2021, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a report on the phenomena. In November 2021, the Pentagon formed a new group to coordinate efforts to detect and identify objects in restricted airspace.

Then in May 2022, a House Intelligence subcommittee held the first congressional hearing in over half a century on military reports of UAPs. Little new light was shed on the true nature of the sightings, but the officials tried to clarify the situation by ruling things out.

While officials noted 18 occasions in which aerial objects had moved at considerable speed without visible means of propulsion, nobody had found unexplained wreckage or records of the military having either received communications from or having fired shots at UAPs. As such, the subcommittee decided that there was not yet enough evidence to claim UAPs are extraterrestrial.

Most recently, NASA convened a panel in June 2022, which held its first public hearing in May this year. The panel will help NASA advise intelligence agencies and the Department of Defense on how to evaluate mysterious sightings. The panel is considering 800 sightings accumulated over 27 years, with 50 to 100 new reports coming in each month. Sean Kirkpatrick from the Department of Defense said that only 2% to 5% of these are anomalous, and the meeting drew no firm conclusions.

Which brings us to this week’s hearing. Congress is getting frustrated with the lack of transparency over UAP sightings. So the subcommittee is using its overall charge of oversight and accountability to get some answers.

Eyebrow-raising testimony

Three witnesses, all ex-military officers, gave sworn testimony to the subcommittee.

David Fravor was a commander in the U.S. Navy in 2004, stationed on the USS Nimitz, when he and another pilot saw an object behaving inexplicably. Video of the encounter was released by the Department of Defense in 2017 and publicized by The New York Times.

Fravor testified that the technology he witnessed was far superior to anything human beings have. He described objects with no visible means of propulsion carrying out sudden maneuvers that no known technology could achieve.

“What concerns me is that there is no oversight from our elected officials on anything associated with our government possessing or working on craft that we believe are not of this world,” Fravor said.

The second witness, Ryan Graves, was an F-18 pilot for over a decade. While stationed at Virginia Beach in 2014, he says, UAP sightings were so frequent among his crew that they became part of daily briefs. He recounted a situation in which two jets had to take evasive action as they encountered a UAP. The description was striking – a dark gray cube inside a clear sphere – quite different from the classic “flying saucer.”

Graves founded Americans for Safe Aerospace to create a center of support and education for aircrew affected by UAP encounters. He testified that the group has 5,000 members and has taken information from 30 witnesses. Most are commercial pilots at major airlines. He alleged that all UAP videos since 2021 are classified by the Pentagon as secret or higher. Graves also said that only 5% of UAP sightings by military and commercial pilots are reported by the pilots that spot them.

“If everyone could see the sensor and video data that I have, there is no doubt that UAP would be a top priority for our defense, intelligence and scientific communities,” Graves said.

The real bombshell came from David Grusch, an Air Force intelligence officer who retired with the rank of major. His high level of security clearance meant he saw reports that were unknown to the public. He sought whistleblower protection after claiming that the U.S. government was operating with secrecy and above congressional oversight with regards to UAP – even claiming that crashed UAPs had yielded biological material of nonhuman origin. The Pentagon has denied this claim. He also said he’d suffered retaliation after reporting this information to his superiors and to multiple inspectors general.

Grusch testifies that the U.S. government has recovered ‘nonhuman biologics.’

“I was informed, in the course of my official duties, of a multidecade UAP crash-retrieval and reverse-engineering program to which I was denied access,” Grusch said in his opening statement to the subcommittee. The Pentagon has denied the existence of such a program now or in the past.

Calls for transparency

While none of this testimony brought forward viable evidence of a broad government conspiracy, most UAP data is not made public and is held by intelligence agencies or the Pentagon. Lawmakers from both parties called for more government transparency. When questioned, all three witnesses said that UAPs represented a clear threat to national security.

If these testimonies are truthful, UAPs of advanced technology – whether they originate from a foreign adversary or not – that make routine incursions into U.S. airspace are a cause for concern.

For now, the subcommittee will continue its work. A tangible outcome will probably be an anonymous reporting mechanism to overcome the stigma commercial and military pilots feel when they witness a UAP. The push for government transparency will likely intensify, and subcommittee members hope to have a classified briefing to evaluate the claims made by Grusch.

As a scientist, I’m trained to be skeptical, and I know that most UFO sightings have mundane explanations. Visual evidence is also notoriously difficult to interpret, and even the dramatic Navy videos have been debunked. More and better data will help resolve the issue, but the gold standard is physical evidence. If Grusch’s claims of crashed UAPs are ever verified, that will be the first UAP hearing with a truly dramatic outcome.

Chris Impey, University Distinguished Professor of Astronomy, University of Arizona

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

Female physicists aren’t represented in the media – and this lack of representation hurts the physics field

Lise Meitner, in the front row, sits alongside many male colleagues at the Seventh Solvay Physics Conference in 1933. Corbin Historical via Getty Images

Carl Kurlander, University of Pittsburgh and Chandralekha Singh, University of Pittsburgh

Christopher Nolan’s highly-anticipated movie “Oppenheimer,” set for release July 21, 2023, depicts J. Robert Oppenheimer and his role in the development of the atomic bomb. But while the Manhattan Project wouldn’t have been possible without the work of many accomplished female scientists, the only women seen in the movie’s trailer are either hanging laundry, crying or cheering the men on.

The only women featured in the official trailer for Christopher Nolan’s ‘Oppenheimer’ are crying, hanging laundry or supporting the men.

As a physics professor who studies ways to support women in STEM – science, technology, engineering and math – fields and a film studies professor who worked as a screenwriter in Hollywood, we believe the trailer’s depiction of women reinforces stereotypes about who can succeed in science. It also represents a larger trend of women’s contributions in science going unrecognized in modern media.

Lise Meitner: A pioneering role model in physics

The Manhattan Project would not have been possible without the work of physicist Lise Meitner, who discovered nuclear fission. Meitner used Einstein’s E=MC² to calculate how much energy would be released by splitting uranium atoms, and it was that development that would prompt Einstein to sign a letter urging President Franklin Roosevelt to begin the United States’ atomic research program.

Einstein called Meitner the “Madame Curie of Germany” and was one of a pantheon of physicists, from Max Planck to Niels Bohr, who nominated Meitner for a Nobel Prize 48 times during her lifetime.

Lise Meitner, the accomplished physicist who discovered nuclear fission. MaterialScientist/Wikimedia Commons

Meitner never won. Instead, the prize for fission went to Otto Hahn, her male lab partner of 30 years in Berlin. Hahn received the news of his nomination under house arrest in England, where he and other German scientists were being held to determine how far the Third Reich had advanced with its atomic program.

Of Jewish descent, Meitner had been forced to flee the Nazis in 1938 and refused to use this scientific discovery to develop a bomb. Rather, she spent the rest of her life working to promote nuclear disarmament and advocating for the responsible use of nuclear energy.

Meitner was not the only woman who made a significant contribution during this time. But the lack of physics role models like Meitner in popular media leads to real-life consequences. Meitner doesn’t appear as a character in the film, as she was not part of the Manhattan Project, but we hope the script alludes to her groundbreaking work.

A lack of representation

Only around 20% of the undergraduate majors and Ph.D. students in physics are women. The societal stereotypes and biases, expectation of brilliance, lack of role models and chilly culture of physics discourage many talented students from historically marginalized backgrounds, like women, from pursuing physics and related disciplines.

Societal stereotypes and biases influence students even before they enter the classroom. One common stereotype is the idea that genius and brilliance are important factors to succeed in physics. However, genius is often associated with boys, and girls from a young age tend to shy away from fields associated with innate brilliance.

Studies have found that by the age of 6, girls are less likely than boys to believe they are “really, really smart.” As these students get older, often the norms in science classes and curricula tend not to represent the interests and values of girls. All of these stereotypes and factors can influence women’s perception of their ability to do physics.

Research shows that at the end of a yearlong college physics course sequence, women with an “A” have the same physics self-efficacy as men with a “C”. A person’s physics self-efficacy is their belief about how good they are at solving physics problems – and one’s self-efficacy can shape their career trajectory.

Women drop out of college science and engineering majors with significantly higher grade-point averages than men who drop out. In some cases, women who drop out have the same GPA as men who complete those majors. Compared to men, women in physics courses feel significantly less recognized for their accomplishments. Recognition from others as a person who can excel in physics is the strongest predictor of a student’s physics identity, or whether they see themselves as someone who can excel in physics.

More frequent media recognition of female scientists, such as Meitner, could vicariously influence young women, who may see them as role models. This recognition alone can boost young women’s physics self-efficacy and identity.

When Meitner started her career at the beginning of the 20th century, male physicists made excuses about why women had no place in a lab – their long hair might catch fire on Bunsen burners, for instance. We like to believe we have made progress in the past century, but the underrepresentation of women in physics is still concerning.

A number of barriers keep young women out of the physics field, but having role models to look up to can lead them toward success. Hill Street Studios/DigitalVision via Getty Images

Diversity as an asset to science

If diverse groups of scientists are involved in brainstorming challenging problems, not only can they devise better, future-oriented solutions, but those solutions will also benefit a wider range of people.

Individuals’ lived experiences affect their perspectives – for example, over two centuries ago, mathematician Ada Lovelace imagined applications far beyond what the original inventors of the computer intended. Similarly, women today are more likely to focus on applications of quantum computers that will benefit their communities. Additionally, physicists from Global South countries are more likely to develop improved stoves, solar cells, water purification systems or solar-powered lamps. The perspectives that diverse groups bring to science problems can lead to new innovations.

Our intention is not to disparage the “Oppenheimer” movie, but to point out that by not centering media attention on diverse voices – including those of women in physics like Meitner – filmmakers perpetuate the status quo and stereotypes about who belongs in physics. Additionally, young women continue to be deprived of exposure to role models who could inspire their academic and professional journeys

Carl Kurlander, Senior Lecturer, Film and Media Studies, University of Pittsburgh and Chandralekha Singh, Distinguished Professor of Physics, University of Pittsburgh

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. 

Zooming across time and space simultaneously with superresolution to understand how cells divide

This image of actin filaments in a cell was taken using a type of superresolution microscopy. Xiaowei Zhuang, HHMI, Harvard University, and Nature Publishing Group/NIH via Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA

Somin Lee, University of Michigan

Cell division, or the process of how daughter cells emerge from a mother cell, is fundamental to biology. Every cell inherits the same protein and DNA building blocks that make up the cell it originally came from. Yet exactly how these molecular building blocks arrange themselves into new cells has remained a mystery.

Studying cell division requires simultaneously viewing nanometer-scale macromolecules like proteins and DNA all the way up to millimeter-scale populations of cells, and over a time frame that ranges from seconds to weeks. Previous microscopes have been able to capture tiny objects only in short time frames, typically just tens of seconds. There hasn’t been a method that can examine a wide range of size and time scales all at once.

My team and I at the University of Michigan’s Bioplasmonics Group developed a new kind of superresolution imaging that reveals previously unknown features of how cells divide.

This hourglass depicts the process of superresolution over time, where the bottom shows a protein and the top a dividing cell going from unresolved, at left, to resolved, at right. Somin Lee, CC BY-ND

Advancing superresolution imaging

It wasn’t possible to view cells at the molecular level until recently with the 2014 Nobel Prize-winning development of superresolution.

Traditional light microscopes blur very small objects that are close together in a sample, because light spreads out as it moves through space. With superresolution, fluorescent probes attached to the sample could be switched on and off like twinkling stars on a clear night. By collecting and combining many images of these probes, a superresolution image can bring very small objects into view. Superresolution opened a whole new world in biology, revealing structures as small as 10 nanometers, which is about the size of a protein molecule.

However, the fluorescent probes that this technique relies on can quickly wear out. This limits its use in studying processes that take place over extended periods, such as cell division.

This PINE microscopy image shows cells dividing, their nuclei stained blue. Somin Lee/Nature Communications, CC BY

My research team and I have a developed a solution we call PINE nanoscopy. Instead of absorbing light as traditional fluorescent probes do, the probes we use scatter the light so they do not break down with repeated light exposure.

To resolve very small objects that are close together, we built filters made of thin layers of polymers and liquid crystals that allow for detection of scattered light, which triggers the probes to switch on and off. This allowed us to see nanometer-scale details of cells that would otherwise be blurred by traditional microscopes.

Remarkably, we found that these nanometer-scale details could be viewed for very long periods – over 250 hours. These details would typically be lost over time with traditional superresolution methods.

Shedding new light on cell division

We then applied our method to study how molecular building blocks organize in cell division.

We focused on a protein called actin that helps maintain cell structure, among many other functions. Actin is shaped like branching filaments, each about 7 nanometers (millionths of a millimeter) in diameter, that link together to span thousands of nanometers. Using PINE nanoscopy, we attached scattering probes to actin to visually follow human cells as they divided.

We made three observations on how actin building blocks organize during cell division. First, these molecular building blocks expand to increase their connections to their neighbors. Second, they also draw closer to their neighbors to increase their points of contact. And third, the resulting networks tend to contract when the actin molecules are more connected to one another and expand when they are less connected to one another.

Based on these findings, we were able to discover new information about the process of cell division. We found that interactions between actin building blocks sync up with the contraction and expansion of the whole cell during division. In other words, the behavior of the actin molecules is connected to the behavior of the cell: The cell contracts when the actin expands, and it expands when the actin contracts.

Superresolution microscopy won the 2014 Nobel Prize in chemistry.

Uncovering disease with superresolution

We plan to use our method to study how other molecular building blocks organize into tissues and organs. Like cells, tissues and organs are organized in a hierarchy that can be examined from a scale of small to large. Examining the dynamic and complex process of how protein building blocks interact with one another to form larger structures could advance the future creation of new replacement tissues and organs, such as skin grafts.

We also plan to use our imaging technique to study how protein building blocks become disorganized in disease. Proteins organize into cells, cells organize into tissues and tissues organize into organs. A very small change in building blocks can disturb this organization, with effects that can lead to diseases like cancer. Our technique could potentially help researchers visualize and, in turn, better understand how molecular defects in tissues and organs may develop into disease.

Somin Lee, Assistant Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, University of Michigan

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. 

Quantum entanglement’s long journey from ‘spooky’ to law of nature

PODCAST: From Einstein’s initial disbelief and Bell’s test to the 2022 Nobel Prizes, quantum entanglement has matured into a pillar of physics. Physicist Nicolas Gisin explains why it took so many decades.

By Adam Levy

Probing the mysteries of neutron stars with a surprising earthly analog

Ultracold gases in the lab could help scientists better understand the universe

By Katie McCormick

Ever since neutron stars were discovered, researchers have been using their unusual properties to probe our universe. The superdense remnants of stellar explosions, neutron stars pack a mass greater than the Sun’s into a ball about as wide as San Francisco. A single cup of this star matter would weigh about as much as Mount Everest.

These odd celestial bodies could alert us to distant disturbances in the fabric of spacetime, teach us about the formation of elements, and unlock the secrets of how gravity and particle physics work in some of the most extreme conditions in the universe.

“They’re at the center of a lot of open questions in astronomy and astrophysics,” says astrophysicist Vanessa Graber of the Institute of Space Sciences in Barcelona.

But to accurately interpret some of the neutron stars’ signals, researchers must first understand what goes on inside them. They have their hunches, but experimenting directly on a neutron star is out of the question. So scientists need another way to test their theories. The behavior of matter in such a superdense object is so complicated that even computer simulations aren’t up to the task. But researchers think they may have found a solution: an earthly analog.

Though young neutron stars can have temperatures in the millions of degrees in their interior, by one important energetic measure neutrons are considered “cold.” Physicists think that is a characteristic they can exploit to study the inner workings of neutron stars. Instead of looking to the sky, researchers are peering into clouds of ultracold atoms created in laboratories here on Earth. And that might help them finally answer some longstanding questions about these enigmatic objects.

Space oddities

The existence of neutron stars was first proposed in 1934, two years after the discovery of the neutron itself, when astronomers Walter Baade and Fritz Zwicky wondered if a celestial body made entirely of neutrons might remain after a supernova explosion. Though they didn’t get all the details right, their general idea is now widely accepted.

Stars power themselves by fusing the nuclei of lighter atoms into those of heavier atoms. But when stars run out of those lighter atoms, nuclear fusion stops and there is no longer an outward pressure to fight against the inward force of gravity. The core collapses and the star’s outer layer races inward. When this layer hits the dense core, it bounces off and explodes outward, producing a supernova. The dense core that remains afterward is a neutron star.

It wasn’t until the 1960s that Zwicky and Baade’s hypothetical neutron stars were finally detected. Radio astronomer Jocelyn Bell Burnell noticed a strange, regularly pulsed radio wave signal from space while working as a graduate student at the University of Cambridge. She was detecting something that had never been seen before: a special kind of neutron star called a pulsar, which flashes beams of radiation at regular intervals as it spins, like a lighthouse. (Her adviser, along with the director of the observatory — but not Bell Burnell — later received the Nobel Prize for the discovery.)

Since then, thousands of neutron stars have been detected. As some of the densest, highest-pressure objects in the universe, neutron stars might help us learn about what happens to matter at extremely high densities. Understanding their structure and the behavior of the neutron matter composing them is of paramount importance to physicists.

Scientists already know that the neutrons, protons and other subatomic particles that compose a neutron star arrange themselves differently depending on where in the star they are. In certain sections, they pack rigidly like water molecules in a block of ice. In others, they flow and swirl like a frictionless fluid. But exactly where the transition happens and how the different phases of matter behave, physicists aren’t sure.

A superdense star born of a nuclear fireball seems, on its face, to have very little in common with a dilute cloud of ultracold particles. But they can share at least one useful characteristic: They are both below a threshold known as the Fermi temperature that depends on — and is calculated based on — the matter each system is made of. A system that is well above this temperature will largely behave according to the laws of classical physics; if it is well below, its behavior will be ruled by quantum mechanics. Certain ultracold gases and neutron star material can both be well below their Fermi temperatures and consequently can act in similar ways, says Christopher Pethick, a theoretical physicist at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen and coauthor of an early overview of neutron stars in the 1975 Annual Review of Nuclear Science.

Matter that is below its Fermi temperature can obey remarkably universal laws. This universality means that, while we don’t have easy access to several-million-degree neutron star matter, we could learn about some of its behavior by experimenting with ultracold gases that can be created and manipulated in laboratory vacuum chambers on Earth, says theoretical astrophysicist James Lattimer of Stony Brook University in New York, author of a summary of the science of nuclear matter in the 2012 Annual Review of Nuclear and Particle Science.

Of particular interest to Lattimer is a theoretical state called a unitary gas. A gas is unitary when each of its particles’ sphere of influence becomes infinite, meaning that they would influence each other no matter how far apart they are. This is impossible to have in reality, but ultracold atom clouds can get close — and so can the matter inside of neutron stars. “It’s similar to a unitary gas,” Lattimer says, “but it’s not a perfect unitary gas.”

Down to Earth

For a long time, the exact relationship between a gas’s pressure and its density was simply too complex to accurately calculate. But when experimental physicists developed the ability to control clouds of cold atoms and tune them to get very, very close to a unitary gas, this opened a new avenue to determining such a gas’s properties: Simply measure it directly, instead of struggling to wrangle the unwieldy math on a computer.

These ultracold atom clouds are actually closer to being a unitary gas than neutron star matter, so the analogy isn’t perfect. But it’s close enough that Lattimer has been able to take almost-unitary-gas measurements from the cold-atom clouds and apply them to neutron matter to refine some of the theoretical models that describe the internal workings of neutron stars. And experiments with cold atoms can help scientists develop theories about what physics might be at play in some unexplained neutron star phenomena.

In particular, Graber and other scientists are hoping to find clues to one of the biggest mysteries, called pulsar glitches. Generally, the regularly timed ticking of a pulsar “clock” is so reliable that its accuracy rivals that of atomic clocks. But not always: Sometimes, the pulsar’s rate of rotation increases abruptly, causing a glitch. Where that extra oomph comes from is unclear. The answer lies with how that matter moves around inside a neutron star.

Both cold gases and neutron matter in some parts of a neutron star are superfluids — the particles flow without any friction. When a superfluid rotates, little whirlpools, or vortices, develop. How exactly these vortices move and interact with one another and other structures inside a rotating neutron star is still an open question. “It’s probably not this nice, regular lattice of vortices,” says Michael McNeil Forbes, who studies theoretical physics at Washington State University in Pullman. “It might be some tangle of vortices that’s in the entire star. We don’t know.”

Forbes and others suspect that the glitches they observe in the rotation of pulsars have something to do with how these vortices get “pinned” to structures in the star. Generally, a single vortex meanders freely around a fluid. But when the fluid contains a rigidly packed area of matter that obstructs the vortex’s motion, the vortex will stop and sometimes even wrap its swirling arms around the rigid object and position itself so that its center is right on top of it.

Vortices tend to stay pinned in this way, but sometimes they can unpin and migrate away from the object. When this happens, the flow of fluid exerts a torque on the object. If hundreds of thousands of vortices unpin from various structures in a neutron star all at once, they can suddenly speed up the star’s rotation. Forbes explains how so many vortices might all unpin at once: “Like dropping sand onto a sand pile — nothing really happens until … you get a whole avalanche.”

But it’s almost impossible for classical computers to exactly calculate all the intricacies of the dance of so many vortices at once. So Forbes plans to team up with experimental groups that can form these vortices in their clouds of cold atoms and see what happens. The idea is to use “cold atom experiments as analog quantum computers for calculating stuff that we can’t do any other way,” he says.

Researchers are busy examining how other ultracold phenomena they regularly see in the lab can inspire new lines of research into the behavior of neutron stars. Recently, Graber and her colleagues outlined so many possibilities that they needed 125 pages to publish them all. In 2019, dozens of astronomers, nuclear physicists and ultracold atomic physicists from around the world gathered to discuss more of the surprising connections between their fields. Researchers are just beginning to test some of the ideas generated by these brainstorms.

They’re also learning more from the stars themselves, says Pethick. “It’s an exciting field, because at the moment there are a lot of observations coming in.”

With better telescopes and new methods to glean properties about a neutron star’s inscrutable interior, scientists can hope to find out just how far this analogy between cold atoms and neutron stars can be taken.

Katie McCormick is a physicist-turned-science-writer who lives in Sacramento, California. In her previous life, she spent a postdoctoral appointment experimenting with ultracold atoms like those in this story.

This article originally appeared in Knowable Magazine, an independent journalistic endeavor from Annual Reviews. 

6 ways AI can make political campaigns more deceptive than ever

There are real fears that AI will make politics more deceptive than it already is. Westend61/Getty Images

David E. Clementson, University of Georgia

Political campaign ads and donor solicitations have long been deceptive. In 2004, for example, U.S. presidential candidate John Kerry, a Democrat, aired an ad stating that Republican opponent George W. Bush “says sending jobs overseas ‘makes sense’ for America.”

Bush never said such a thing.

The next day Bush responded by releasing an ad saying Kerry “supported higher taxes over 350 times.” This too was a false claim.

These days, the internet has gone wild with deceptive political ads. Ads often pose as polls and have misleading clickbait headlines.

Campaign fundraising solicitations are also rife with deception. An analysis of 317,366 political emails sent during the 2020 election in the U.S. found that deception was the norm. For example, a campaign manipulates recipients into opening the emails by lying about the sender’s identity and using subject lines that trick the recipient into thinking the sender is replying to the donor, or claims the email is “NOT asking for money” but then asks for money. Both Republicans and Democrats do it.

Campaigns are now rapidly embracing artificial intelligence for composing and producing ads and donor solicitations. The results are impressive: Democratic campaigns found that donor letters written by AI were more effective than letters written by humans at writing personalized text that persuades recipients to click and send donations.

A pro-Ron DeSantis super PAC featured an AI-generated imitation of Donald Trump’s voice in this ad.

And AI has benefits for democracy, such as helping staffers organize their emails from constituents or helping government officials summarize testimony.

But there are fears that AI will make politics more deceptive than ever.

Here are six things to look out for. I base this list on my own experiments testing the effects of political deception. I hope that voters can be equipped with what to expect and what to watch out for, and learn to be more skeptical, as the U.S. heads into the next presidential campaign.

Bogus custom campaign promises

My research on the 2020 presidential election revealed that the choice voters made between Biden and Trump was driven by their perceptions of which candidate “proposes realistic solutions to problems” and “says out loud what I am thinking,” based on 75 items in a survey. These are two of the most important qualities for a candidate to have to project a presidential image and win.

AI chatbots, such as ChatGPT by OpenAI, Bing Chat by Microsoft, and Bard by Google, could be used by politicians to generate customized campaign promises deceptively microtargeting voters and donors.

Currently, when people scroll through news feeds, the articles are logged in their computer history, which are tracked by sites such as Facebook. The user is tagged as liberal or conservative, and also tagged as holding certain interests. Political campaigns can place an ad spot in real time on the person’s feed with a customized title.

Campaigns can use AI to develop a repository of articles written in different styles making different campaign promises. Campaigns could then embed an AI algorithm in the process – courtesy of automated commands already plugged in by the campaign – to generate bogus tailored campaign promises at the end of the ad posing as a news article or donor solicitation.

ChatGPT, for instance, could hypothetically be prompted to add material based on text from the last articles that the voter was reading online. The voter then scrolls down and reads the candidate promising exactly what the voter wants to see, word for word, in a tailored tone. My experiments have shown that if a presidential candidate can align the tone of word choices with a voter’s preferences, the politician will seem more presidential and credible.

Exploiting the tendency to believe one another

Humans tend to automatically believe what they are told. They have what scholars call a “truth-default.” They even fall prey to seemingly implausible lies.

In my experiments I found that people who are exposed to a presidential candidate’s deceptive messaging believe the untrue statements. Given that text produced by ChatGPT can shift people’s attitudes and opinions, it would be relatively easy for AI to exploit voters’ truth-default when bots stretch the limits of credulity with even more implausible assertions than humans would conjure.

More lies, less accountability

Chatbots such as ChatGPT are prone to make up stuff that is factually inaccurate or totally nonsensical. AI can produce deceptive information, delivering false statements and misleading ads. While the most unscrupulous human campaign operative may still have a smidgen of accountability, AI has none. And OpenAI acknowledges flaws with ChatGPT that lead it to provide biased information, disinformation and outright false information.

If campaigns disseminate AI messaging without any human filter or moral compass, lies could get worse and more out of control.

Coaxing voters to cheat on their candidate

A New York Times columnist had a lengthy chat with Microsoft’s Bing chatbot. Eventually, the bot tried to get him to leave his wife. “Sydney” told the reporter repeatedly “I’m in love with you,” and “You’re married, but you don’t love your spouse … you love me. … Actually you want to be with me.”

Imagine millions of these sorts of encounters, but with a bot trying to ply voters to leave their candidate for another.

AI chatbots can exhibit partisan bias. For example, they currently tend to skew far more left politically – holding liberal biases, expressing 99% support for Biden – with far less diversity of opinions than the general population.

In 2024, Republicans and Democrats will have the opportunity to fine-tune models that inject political bias and even chat with voters to sway them.

In 2004, a campaign ad for Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, left, lied about his opponent, Republican George W. Bush, right. Bush’s campaign lied about Kerry, too. AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee

Manipulating candidate photos

AI can change images. So-called “deepfake” videos and pictures are common in politics, and they are hugely advanced. Donald Trump has used AI to create a fake photo of himself down on one knee, praying.

Photos can be tailored more precisely to influence voters more subtly. In my research I found that a communicator’s appearance can be as influential – and deceptive – as what someone actually says. My research also revealed that Trump was perceived as “presidential” in the 2020 election when voters thought he seemed “sincere.” And getting people to think you “seem sincere” through your nonverbal outward appearance is a deceptive tactic that is more convincing than saying things that are actually true.

Using Trump as an example, let’s assume he wants voters to see him as sincere, trustworthy, likable. Certain alterable features of his appearance make him look insincere, untrustworthy and unlikable: He bares his lower teeth when he speaks and rarely smiles, which makes him look threatening.

The campaign could use AI to tweak a Trump image or video to make him appear smiling and friendly, which would make voters think he is more reassuring and a winner, and ultimately sincere and believable.

Evading blame

AI provides campaigns with added deniability when they mess up. Typically, if politicians get in trouble they blame their staff. If staffers get in trouble they blame the intern. If interns get in trouble they can now blame ChatGPT.

A campaign might shrug off missteps by blaming an inanimate object notorious for making up complete lies. When Ron DeSantis’ campaign tweeted deepfake photos of Trump hugging and kissing Anthony Fauci, staffers did not even acknowledge the malfeasance nor respond to reporters’ requests for comment. No human needed to, it appears, if a robot could hypothetically take the fall.

Not all of AI’s contributions to politics are potentially harmful. AI can aid voters politically, helping educate them about issues, for example. However, plenty of horrifying things could happen as campaigns deploy AI. I hope these six points will help you prepare for, and avoid, deception in ads and donor solicitations.

David E. Clementson, Assistant Professor, Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Georgia

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.