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Why AI Makes Political Authenticity Harder to Trust – Dr. Michael Cohen (EP 24)

Why AI Makes Political Authenticity Harder to Trust – Dr. Michael Cohen (EP 24)

The In-Between Tech and Trust Podcast vor 4 Monaten

0:00

34:32

AI has collapsed the cost of producing political content.
Verifying it is another matter, and Cohen has spent two decades
watching that gap widen from inside campaigns and classrooms. He
has a three-part test for practitioners navigating it — real,
authentic, factual — and this conversation is about why he thinks
it has to be taught before anyone reaches the job.

Episode overview

Cohen runs Congress in Your Pocket, teaches digital campaign
strategy at Johns Hopkins and NYU, and serves as executive
director of Fight Hate, which works to reduce anti-Semitism on
college campuses. From all of it, his argument is the same: the
ethical line gets drawn before practitioners reach the job, or it
does not get drawn at all. The conversation moves through what it
cost him to hold a non-partisan position when one side of the
political spectrum came after him, why he believes
hyper-targeting served democracy better than broadcast
advertising did, and what his students are starting to find they
can no longer reliably spot in AI-generated video. Real,
authentic, factual — he gives students that test before they
touch the tools, because by the time they are on a campaign, the
pressure to cross the line is already there.

Key themes discussed

What changes when AI makes political content production fast
and cheap

Eighteen years of answering every user email personally — and
what that reveals about civic trust

Why he teaches the ethical line before students touch the
tools

Fight Hate and the deliberate choice to stop fighting hate
online

What happens when AI-generated video gets good enough to fool
the generation that grew up spotting it

About the guest

Dr. Michael Cohen lectures in political campaigning and digital
strategy at Johns Hopkins University and NYU, and
wrote Modern Political Campaigns: How Professionalism,
Technology, and Speed Have Revolutionized Elections. He founded
Congress in Your Pocket in the year of the first iPhone and has
run it for eighteen years, answering every user email personally
throughout. He is currently executive director of Fight Hate,
working to reduce anti-Semitism on college campuses through
student-led offline organising.

Chapter markers

[00:01] The iPhone as political infrastructure

[06:08] What eighteen years of personal emails taught him
about trust

[13:36] Why hyper-targeting may be better for democracy than
broadcast advertising

[19:31] Real, authentic, factual — the line and what it costs

[24:35] Fight Hate: using digital tools to get people off
them

[37:35] The authenticity meter: how far AI video has pushed
even digital natives

Timestamps approximate from transcript - adjust after final edit.

Links

Dr. Michael Cohen on LinkedIn -
https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaeldavidcohen/

Congress in Your Pocket -
https://www.congressinyourpocket.com

Fight Hate website - https://fighthate.org/home/

Modern Political Campaigns (book) -
https://www.modernpoliticalcampaigns.com

Blue Square Project by Robert Kraft -
https://www.bluesquarealliance.org/bsa-blue-square-alliance-take-over-b/?nab=1

Eva is on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/evalihotzky/