Call for PapersThe AAAI 2024 Third Workshop on AI for Credible Elections:  A Call To Action with Trusted AI 

We invite papers that describe innovative use of AI technology or techniques in election processes. The workshop is intended to provide a forum for discussing new approaches and challenges in building AI that people trust and use for critical applications that power society - conducting elections, and for exchanging ideas about how to move the area forward.

Description: Artificial Intelligence and machine learning have transformed modern society. It also impacts how elections are conducted in democracies, with mixed outcomes. For example, digital marketing campaigns have enabled candidates to connect with voters at scale and communicate remotely during COVID-19, but there remains widespread concern about the spread of election disinformation as the result of AI-enabled bots and aggressive strategies [1a-b,2a-d,3a-i].

In response, we conducted the first AI for Credible Elections (AI4CE) workshop at Neurips 2021 [4-a] to examine the challenges of credible elections globally in an academic setting with apolitical discussion of significant issues. The speakers, panels and reviewed papers discussed current and best practices in holding elections, tools available for candidates and the experience of voters. They highlighted gaps and experience regarding AI-based interventions and methodologies. To ground the discussion, the invited speakers and panelists were drawn from three International geographies: US - representing one of the world’s oldest democracies; India - representing the largest democracy in the world; and Estonia - representing a country using digital technologies extensively during elections and as a facet of daily life. The workshop had contributions on all technological and methodological aspects of elections and voting. At AAAI 2023, we ran the second edition of the workshop [4-b]. It focused on topics of interest to election candidates like organizing candidate campaigns and detecting, informing and managing mis- and disinformation; for election organizers, identifying and validating voters and informing people about election information; for voters, knowing about election procedures, verifying individual and community votes, navigating candidates and issues; and cross-cutting issues like promoting transparency in the election process, technology for data management and validation, and case-studies of success or failure, and the reasons thereof. This time, additional speakers discussed experiences from Brazil, Canada and Ireland. The workshop discussed AI trends, security gaps in elections and the lack of a standard secure stack to build trusted data-driven applications for elections, how AI and technology are already being used to make the election process work and how to improve, the role of journalists with AI and what policy steps are needed to adopt technology for a better informed citizen. Select papers from the two workshops were invited to the AI magazine special issue on the theme of “AI for Credible Elections” theme for Fall 2023.

At AAAI 2024, we seek to run the third edition of the workshop and build on the lessons from the earlier two events. In 2024, India will conduct its next general election before May and US will have its next Presidential election in November. Given the momentous occasions, we will redouble the discussion on empowering voters to make informed decisions and dissemination of official election information, and extend the discussion to address open research problems that Trusted AI could address. 

The workshop welcomes contributions on all aspects of elections and voting, but especially focus on the use of AI in the following:

●  For voters

• ○  Helping groups with special needs, like seniors or first-time voters, understand elections processes
• ○  Helping voters understand issues, candidates and parties
• ○  Reducing cost of voting

●  For candidates

• ○  Organizing candidate campaigns
• ○  Detecting, informing and managing mis- and dis-information
• ○  Managing narratives: candidate, party and opposition

●  For election organizers

• ○  Identifying and validating voters
• ○  Informing voters about election information understandably
• ○  Possible legal and regulatory gaps and solutions
• ○  Assessing pulse of voting
• ○  Expediting results computation and dissemination

●  Cross-cutting

• ○      Detecting, informing and managing election mis and disinformation as well as increasingly sophisticated Deep Fakes.
• ○      Promoting transparency in the election process
• ○      Technology for data management and validation

Standardizing a secure stack for verifying AI innovations 

The intended audience of the workshop are students, academic researchers, professionals involved in technology for election management and informed voters.

Paper preparation instructions

Submission Format: either extended abstracts (4 pages) or full papers (7 pages) anonymised using the AAAI 2024 style guidelines found here.

Papers may contain an unlimited number of pages for references and appendices. The latter may not necessarily be read by the reviewers. We request and recommend that authors rely on the supplementary material only to include minor details (e.g., hyperparameter settings, reproducibility information, etc.) that do not fit in the page limit. The submission process is double-blind.

All accepted papers will be presented in a virtual poster session. We welcome articles currently under review or papers planned for publication elsewhere. Submissions on Easychair.

Program/Presentation Format: to be determined

Publication: There will be no formal publication of workshop proceedings. However, the accepted papers will be made available online on the workshop website and will count as non-archival reports to allow submissions to future conferences/journals.

Important Dates 

Workshop paper submissions due: November 30, 2023

Notification to authors: December 11, 2023

Camera-ready copies of authors’ papers: December 18, 2023

Early-bird registration to the conference: December 20, 2023

Workshop date: February 26 or 27, 2024 (date to be announced)

Workshop Organizers

Biplav Srivastava (University of South Carolina), Anita Nikolich (University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign), Andrea Hickerson (University of Mississippi), Tarmo Koppel (Tallinn University of Technology), Chris Dawes (New York University), Sachindra Joshi (IBM Research), Ponnaguram Kumaraguru (International Institute of Information Technology)