Molillo answers on outside vendor and expertise needs

Thank you so much.

We sympathize with the perspective of both.

As to your first question, yes, I do believe we would need the support of an outside vendor for two reasons.

We wholeheartedly share your concerns about the ways that AI technology could be used to spread false information to intentionally mislead or deceive voters about council members and other city candidates and officeholders.

One, in order to be able to expand on our current databases and build out our public website to make this data

At the Campaign Finance Board, we have placed a priority on learning about artificial intelligence.

We have a unique perspective on this topic rooted in our dual mandate to serve candidates and voters.

both collectible and available to the public, we would likely need to bring in outside support from a vendor in order to speed that build so that we could do so within the confines of the law.

We sympathize with the perspective of both.

We wholeheartedly share your concerns about the ways that AI technology could be used to spread false information to intentionally mislead or deceive voters about council members and other city candidates and officeholders.

But I think our larger concern would be around building the expertise necessary to continue this ongoing monitoring of potential deepfakes or use of AI that perhaps goes undisclosed to us.

At the Campaign Finance Board, we have placed a priority on learning about artificial intelligence.

We have a unique perspective on this topic rooted in our dual mandate to serve candidates and voters.

We sympathize with the perspective of both.

So we recently, for example, spoke to our colleagues in Connecticut at the State Elections Enforcement Commission.

We wholeheartedly share your concerns about the ways that AI technology could be used to spread false information to intentionally mislead or deceive voters about council members and other city candidates and officeholders.

They had contemplated similar legislation in Connecticut.

They spoke to federal counterparts who do this for a living, and they basically said a couple things.

At the Campaign Finance Board, we have placed a priority on learning about artificial intelligence.

We have a unique perspective on this topic rooted in our dual mandate to serve candidates and voters.

One, there is no existing software today that can effectively spot deepfakes anymore.

We sympathize with the perspective of both.

We wholeheartedly share your concerns about the ways that AI technology could be used to spread false information to intentionally mislead or deceive voters about council members and other city candidates and officeholders.

I think we're just in a place where the technology is evolving so rapidly, any sort of detection tools can't effectively keep up.

At the Campaign Finance Board, we have placed a priority on learning about artificial intelligence.

So there's nothing that we could purchase to allow us to monitor this in an ongoing way.

We have a unique perspective on this topic rooted in our dual mandate to serve candidates and voters.

And we would therefore have to then rely more heavily on both proactive disclosure from campaigns and independent spenders, complaints from the public, and then building expertise on our own staff.

We sympathize with the perspective of both.

We wholeheartedly share your concerns about the ways that AI technology could be used to spread false information to intentionally mislead or deceive voters about council members and other city candidates and officeholders.

At the Campaign Finance Board, we have placed a priority on learning about artificial intelligence.

The other thing that we heard from our colleagues in Connecticut is that those staff members do tend to be expensive.

We have a unique perspective on this topic rooted in our dual mandate to serve candidates and voters.

This is highly specialized knowledge that only a few people have,

We sympathize with the perspective of both.

We wholeheartedly share your concerns about the ways that AI technology could be used to spread false information to intentionally mislead or deceive voters about council members and other city candidates and officeholders.

so we would need some time to be able to build that out to come up with a true cost estimate, and we would likely need to rely on outside expertise in order to build our internal knowledge.

At the Campaign Finance Board, we have placed a priority on learning about artificial intelligence.

We have a unique perspective on this topic rooted in our dual mandate to serve candidates and voters.