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Welcome to AI Decoded, Fast Companys weekly newsletter that breaks down the most important news in the world of AI. You can sign up to receive this newsletter every week via email here. Artificial intelligence is moving from a buzzword to a working tool in politics. The National Democratic Training Committee (NDTC), which has trained more than 120,000 Democrats since its founding in 2016, has launched its first playbook on how campaigns can use AI responsibly. The three-part training explains how AI works and offers guidance on using it to draft speeches, phone-banking scripts, and social media posts. It also highlights clear boundaries, warning campaigns not to create deepfakes, impersonate people, or generate misleading images and videos. Candidates are encouraged to disclose when AI has been used in content creation, particularly in personal messaging or policy development, as a way to build transparency and trust. The project was created in partnership with the Higher Ground Institute. For NDTC founder and CEO Kelly Dietrich, the goal is to make sure Democratic campaigns have the knowledge and confidence to use AI effectively. Fast Company spoke with Dietrich about the new training, the opportunities it opens, and the standards he believes campaigns must uphold. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Why did you feel campaigns needed something like this training? AI is increasingly becoming a part of everyday life. Politics are traditionally lagging in adoption of new technology. Candidates especially are a little tenuous about adopting new tech and strategies that arent proven. Thats because running for office is sometimes the biggest decision of someones life, and candidates are sometimes scared to try something new and fail. That way, if they dont win, they can say, Well, I did everything right. Were constantly trying to get people to stay on the cutting edge and understand how new tools can make their campaigns more effective. The training that weve put together shows people how to understand AI. And this isnt like a college course; you dont need to understand how AI is built. But you should understand what it can and cannot do, and how you can use it ethically and most effectively on your campaign. When most of us think about campaigns, we think about big presidential [ones] or maybe a really fancy congressional race. Thats not reality for 99% of the campaigns run in our country. Theres more than 518,000 elected officials. Only 537 of them are at the federal level, only 15,000 and change are at the state level. The other half million-plus are local offices: city council, school board, library board, county boards, all of these elected offices that very few people think of but have a very important and direct effect on our lives. And for 90-plus percent of those, they usually have budgets of less than $2,500. Usually, its just the candidate and maybe one or two dedicated volunteers. In those campaignsin addition to the big congressionalseverybody has limited time, money, and people. AI allows you to accomplish more with those three limited resources. The training seems pretty practical, from what Ive seen. Can you break down the programs approach? Every training that we built is designed for a candidate or a staff person to be able to use immediately. So if youre going to give us a half hour of your time, you dont need just theoretical background information on AI. So, the course breaks down what AI is, but then we can show you examples of use cases and specific AI tools within the Democratic ecosphere that you can usesay, helping you to write a door-to-door script. And honestly, Republicans are already using this, and theyre using it in ways that I dont think are necessarily ethical or even moral. But Democrats need to be using this or risk being left behind. NDTC trains in three different ways. First, we have on-demand courses like the AI course, which are available 24/7. If youre running for local office, thats usually not a full-time job. So whether youre a teacher, lawyer, nurse, or anything else, you can go to work, come home, have dinner with your family, put your kids to bed, and then pull out your iPad or laptop. In 30 minutes, you can understand what AI is, how to use it, and what it can do for your campaign immediately. Second, we do virtual live trainings. We hold a couple hundred of these each year. We dont call them webinarswebinars put everyone to sleepbut instead interactive online trainings, usually held at noon Central [time]. Weve already seen interest in developing an AI live training to complement the on-demand course. Third, we train through cohortsmultiweek live sessions. Well be incorporating AI into those as well, making it one of the core lessons candidates and staff need to be more effective. Can you tell me a bit more about which AI tools can be especially effective in campaigning? You have your general-purpose AI tools, whether thats Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini. And then there are specific political AI tools, like Chorus AI, which optimizes political content for impact and engagement across platforms and audiences. And youve got Change Agent, which is more of a general language model but aligns with organizers and activism values. Have campaigns jumped on board with the training? Weve already had more than 250 people take the course online, and its only been up for a few days. How do you make sure these tools arent abused or opening up a floodgate? Since the dawn of time, technology has been used for good and for bad, and the best we can do is educate and show people the difference. At the end of the day, everyone makes their own moral choice, and I think the values Democrats represent preclude those types of abuse. What we need to do is create education, because most candidates know of AI but dont know how to use it. They dont understand what a powerful tool it can be. Can we make it more approachable, easier to understand, and walk people through exactly how it can help them accomplish their campaign goals? It can help them talk to more voters, win more votesall the things that matter. Once youve laid out your campaign message and core talking points, AI can take those and help you create scripts, press releases, and a whole range of materials. More AI coverage from Fast Company: OpenAI gave GPT-5 an emotional lobotomy, and it crippled the model An engineer explains how AI can prevent satellite disastrs in space This startup knows what AI is saying about your brand I tried 10 AI browsers. Heres why Perplexitys Comet is the best so far Want exclusive reporting and trend analysis on technology, business innovation, future of work, and design? Sign up for Fast Company Premium.
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China has been expanding the use of digital currencies as it promotes wider use of its yuan, or renminbi, to reflect its status as the world’s second-largest economy and challenge the overwhelming sway of the U.S. dollar in international trade and finance. However, restrictions on access to Chinese financial markets and limits on convertibility of the yuan, or peoples money, are big obstacles blocking its global use. Still, Hong Kong already has stablecoin regulations and some Chinese experts are pushing for regulations to prepare for a possible stablecoin pegged to the yuan. Officials at the People’s Bank of China and State Council Information Office in Beijing did not immediately respond to requests for comment on a Reuters report that the State Council, or Cabinet, is preparing to issue a plan for internationalizing the yuan that might include a yuan stablecoin. In the U.S., President Donald Trump has made cryptofriendly policies a priority for his administration. He signed a law, the GENIUS Act, last month regulating stablecoins. How stablecoins work Stablecoins are digital currencies whose value is linked to a specific currency such as the U.S. dollar. They can be used as a substitute in situations where currency transactions might be difficult or costly. They are different from cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin in that their only purpose is to be a means of payment, not an investment meant to be traded to gain value. Dollar stablecoins are typically bought and sold for $1 each. They are based on a reserve equal to their value, but are issued by private institutions, not central banks like the U.S. Federal Reserve. Stablecoins are not Digital Central Bank Currencies, which are digital versions of currencies issued by central banks. They are based on blockchain-based distributed ledgers. They are stable in the sense that their value is anchored to the currency they are based on. Critics of stablecoins say that since they are essentially a proxy for ordinary currencies that can bypass banking systems and safeguards set up to manage traditional financial transactions, they may be most useful for illegal purposes. China inches toward using digital currencies China launched its own digital yuan, the e-CNY issued by its central bank, on a trial basis in 2019, and McDonalds was an early participant in that project. Chinese regulators have banned mining, trading and other dealings in private, decentralized digital currencies like Bitcoin, while encouraging use of the digital yuan. The nearly universal use of electronic payments has facilitated use of the e-CNY in the Chinese mainland, with some cities using it to pay wages of civil servants. State media reported that as of July 2024, there were 7.3 trillion yuan worth of transactions using the currency in areas where it is being used on a trial basis. China has also been promoting use of e-CNY in Africa, as it expands business dealings on the continent. But e-CNY are not stablecoins. Experts say regulations are needed to safely manage use of stablecoins and to ensure they could be used smoothly with bank accounts and payment systems. Hong Kong’s role in digital currencies Hong Kong, a former British colony that has its own financial markets, currency and partly autonomous legal system, enacted a stablecoin law that took effect on Aug. 1. Aimed at attracting wealthy investors who want to use digital currencies and other financial products, it requires that a stablecoin linked to the Hong Kong dollar must be equal to the Hong Kong dollar reserves for that digital currency. As a global duty-free port and financial hub, Hong Kong has often served as a base for trying out paths toward liberalizing Chinese financial markets. But new regulations specifically governing yuan stablecoin would be needed if such a digital currency were issued for use in Hong Kong, Liu Xiaochun, deputy director of the Shanghai Institute of New Finance, recently wrote in a report on the Chinese financial website Yicai.com. China’s limits on cross-border dealings China’s currency is not freely convertible in world financial markets and its stringent controls on foreign exchange are the biggest hindrance toward making the yuan a global currency, experts say. According to the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or SWIFT, as of June, the yuan was the sixth most active currency for global payments by value, with a share of 2.88%. Its use peaked in July 2024 at about 4.7%. It’s used more often in trade financing, where it accounts for nearly 6% of such dealings, according to that report. The lions share of yuan transactions take place in Hong Kong. The U.S. dollar’s share as a global payment currency was over 47% as of June, followed by the euro, the British pound, the Canadian dollar and the Japanese yen, the report said. Elaine Kurtenbach, AP business writer AP Researcher Shihuan Chen contributed.
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Johnson & Johnson said on Thursday it would invest $2 billion in North Carolina as it aims to expand its U.S. manufacturing presence amid looming drug import duties proposed by President Donald Trump’s administration. Major drugmakers, including Eli Lilly and AstraZeneca, have also committed to shell out billions of dollars to scale up their U.S. footprint in response to Trump’s efforts, including tariff threats. Earlier this month, Trump said he plans to impose phased-in tariffs for the pharmaceutical sector, which could start small and eventually rise to 250%. J&J said on Thursday it has reached a 10-year agreement with Tokyo-based contract drug developer Fujifilm Diosynth for its more than 160,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Holly Springs, North Carolina, which would create about 120 new jobs. Fujifilm in April had signed a more than $3 billion deal with Regeneron to manufacture and supply drug products for the U.S.-based company at its North Carolina facility for a span of 10 years. J&J would also announce plans for additional manufacturing facilities in the U.S. and the expansion of current U.S. sites in the coming months. The healthcare conglomerate had said in March it would raise U.S. investments by 25% to more than $55 billion over the next four years, including a separate plant in Wilson, North Carolina. Mariam Sunny, Reuters
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