“I think that is a danger with AI, because it is not about the left and the right, it is about democrats against authoritarians,” he said in one of his first public appearances since resigning as U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s top aide in February. He noted the U.K. could “learn a lot” from what Ukraine is doing.
An AI-operated election campaign could target 5,000 different voter target groups, compared to just 10 if run by humans, McSweeney noted.
“The risk then for democracies is that election campaigns become much less of a national story and much closer to individual stories, and that becomes harder,” he said.
The ex-aide also highlighted the challenges of governing in an era of “permanent disruption.”
Starmer, his former boss, is facing a revolt from almost 100 of his own MPs who want a change in the Labour leadership following a dire set of local elections earlier this month.
“It was very clear to me that the new Labour government that we have got now is governing in a very different era to the previous Labour government,” McSweeney said.
“For politicians the challenge is how do you govern in an era of permanent disruption, not how you just react to it. It is an era that I think politically has been shaped by the insecurity of voters, and in that context I think AI is not just an information channel, it is a new system of politics,” he said.