Mark Cuban has shared his take on how social media algorithms and artificial intelligence have affected the information that potential voters are exposed to online.
Former President Donald Trump was this week officially named as the Republican nominee for November's election. He is expected to face off against President Joe Biden, who is currently under pressure to quit his reelection efforts ahead of next month's Democratic National Convention.
While billionaire businessman Cuban has thrown his support behind Biden over Trump, he this week took to X, formerly Twitter, to share his views on the factors that make this current election cycle unique as things enter uncharted territory.
He wrote: "Here is my unpopular on @X opinion on this political cycle: 'This seems to be to be a race where everyone's frame of reference is influenced more by the narratives delivered by the algorithms we consume than the actual events themselves.'"
"Those algorithms evolve as new information, accurate or not, are posted," the Shark Tank star went on. "So none of us really have any idea how any event or reality will impact the Presidential and other important races this cycle.
"This is the first AI driven election season where policy and personalities mean nothing and algorithms drive everything. The most influential positions in politics, is whoever controls the algorithms for each significant online platform.
"The next most important positions, are the people at each campaign, who can figure out how to reverse-engineer the algos and use them to their advantage."
As of press time, the Dallas Mavericks minority owner's post had garnered more than 1.5 million views.
Cuban himself shared AI-generated information on X via ChatGPT last month, following Biden and Trump's first presidential debate. He placed a full transcript of the debate into the program and asked who would be the best of the two to hire for a job based on their statements.
Per the post, the program concluded: "While both candidates have strengths, neither demonstrated all the qualities one might seek for an ideal employee in a professional setting based solely on the debate transcript. Biden's empathy and experience are valuable, but his communication issues are concerning. Trump's confidence and economic focus are strengths, but his exaggerations and lack of specifics are problematic.
"Thus, based on the debate performance alone, it would be challenging to decisively hire either candidate without further evaluation of their professional capabilities and specific job fit."
The dangers of algorithm-delivered information have long been a talking point due to misinformation. The United States Department of Justice recently seized two domains linked to Russia's wartime disinformation campaign that was used to spread misinformation and fake news on social media.
FBI officials said the AI-powered information operation out of Russia included nearly 1,000 accounts on X pretending to be Americans. The investigation uncovered a Russian bot farm that used artificial intelligence to create fake social media profiles masquerading as Americans to post support for Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine.
The 968 social media accounts, allegedly connected to Russian State TV RT, were "used by Russian actors to create an AI-enhanced social media bot farm that spread disinformation in the United States and abroad," officials said.
Russia has routinely weaponized social media to spread disinformation in an attempt to sow discord within Western democracies.
Elena Simperl, a professor of computer science at King's College London, told Newsweek: "The biggest danger from all this is that people stop [believing] or trusting anyone, any institution and that leads to disengagement from democratic or collective decision-making."
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