Information & Ethics committee  It's a great question. My father once had great advice. He said that it's not good to put people on pedestals because eventually everyone needs to pee. It's sound advice in this case. It's important that we understand our own faults and it's important that we understand the faults of our allies.

Information & Ethics committee  That's such a good question. Going back to what we were saying about whether or not we trust each other, the real question is whether we trust ourselves. The danger that AI poses, especially generative AI, is it can trigger what's called an authenticity crisis. You won't know if you're talking to a real human.

Information & Ethics committee  Very famously, the Soviet information.... It wasn't called the GRU at the time, but it had a swastika campaign in the seventies in Europe. It decided it would paint swastikas everywhere. This goes to Ben's point about successful versus unsuccessful disinformation operations and what characterizes signal and what characterizes noise.

Information & Ethics committee  You know, I said in the podcast we were talking about earlier that I really feel that what's needed for democracies is a rapid investigatory function to be able to help really visualize the difference. Let's imagine. Let's go back to Europe. Let's do the experiment. Seventy GRU people are putting up swastikas.

Information & Ethics committee  I wouldn't even know where to start. I think that the problem has become so prolific. I think that there are historical reasons; that's true. The hatred of Jews is a fairly high-octane hate. It's very powerful. It has a 1,000-year history, or a 3,000-year history or whatever, to draw upon in order to inform critics and people who are looking for something to blame.

Information & Ethics committee  Thank you so much. I'm Joel Finkelstein, the chief science officer and the founder of the Network Contagion Research Institute. Our organization profiles a lot of different threats that are facing governments, democracy and vulnerable communities. There are two that I want to bring to the attention of lawmakers today because I think they're highly emblematic of the kinds of threats that lawmakers often can't see, that platforms themselves have challenges policing and that have the capacity—I think intrinsically—for a profound breakout in the near future in ways that I think could create terrible harms for society and for vulnerable communities.