How AI, Blockchain Impact The 2024 Presidential Race
By Benzinga
Late September at a Wall Street Fundraiser, Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris made an appeal directly to crypto and AI technology industries with a tech forward statement
Harris stated: “We will partner together to invest in America’s competitiveness, to invest in America’s future. We will encourage innovative technologies like AI and digital assets while protecting our consumers and investors.”
The approach seems to be working.
On Tuesday, CNBC reported that Chris Larsen, co-founder of Ripple (CRYPTO: XRP) gave $1 million worth of XRP tokens to Harris-friendly super PAC Future Forward.
Benzinga spoke with Charles Dray, CEO and Founder Resonance Security, which uses AI to help secure smart contracts and crypto assets, and asked if he was encouraged by Harris’ statement.
Dray responded, “Regardless of who the president of the United States is, they will eventually find that they will need to support emerging technologies. The question isn’t if, the question is how. How the government will implement effective measures that both support technological advancement, but limit malicious use of new technologies.”
When asked what a lack of support from the US Executive Branch could mean for the future of AI and crypto in the United States, Dray had a cautionary tale.
“The lack of support would lead to missing puzzle pieces which will be needed for technological evolution and leave the country scrambling to catch up to standards that will eventually be mainstream. We’ve seen this happen with previous technologies like internet coverage for example. Some regions who did not prioritize implementing the infrastructure for new technologies in the past are still struggling to catch up.”
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AI has already played a controversial role in the 2024 US election. Associated Press reported that while both the Democrats and Republicans have used funny and clearly fake AI images in their campaigns, the Trump campaign took a darker turn by using AI images to support erroneous claims that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio are eating household pets.
Upland (CRYPTO: SPARKLET), a Play-to-Earn (P2E) GameFi project that delivers “an immersive gaming platform” according to their web site, understands the potential and hazards of AI, but sees blockchain as a potential solution.
Danny Brown, Chief of Staff at Upland, said: “With the proliferation of AI content in social platforms, it is becoming increasingly complex to verify the source and authenticity of information. Ensuring copyright protection and proper usage of visual content online, especially with regards to images and photos, depends on the ability to verify origin. Because of blockchains decentralized, immutable, and permissionless attributions it’s the best suited technology to serve as a “source of truth” for image source and authenticity.”
Dray from Resonance believes that policies are needed to regulate irresponsible use of AI technology.
“The attack on one figure or group usually reveals weakness in other influential figures and groups using similar technologies. This creates a very risky situation for a large population and it’s probably a good reason to implement policies. For cybersecurity, policy will not be enough. The standardization of defensive and offensive security protections, approved by security experts, must go hand in hand with policies,” Dray said.
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Image: Brian Penny from Pixabay.
