Tackling the Data Collection Behind China’s AI ambitions

Course China is tapping AI based data some examples here.     Via Brookings.edu

How to tackle the data collection behind China’s AI ambitions

April 29, 2022 Jessica Dawson and Tarah WheelerThe United States and China are increasingly engaged in a competition over who will dominate the strategic technologies of tomorrow. No technology is as important in that competition as artificial intelligence: Both the United States and China view global leadership in AI as a vital national interest, with China pledging to be the world leader by 2030. As a result, both Beijing and Washington have encouraged massive investment in AI research and development.

Yet the competition over AI is not just about funding. In addition to investments in talent and computing power, high-performance AI also requires data—and lots of it. The competition for AI leadership cannot be won without procuring and compiling large-scale datasets. Although we have some insight into Chinese A.I. funding generally—see, for example, a recent report from the Center for Security and Emerging Technology on the People’s Liberation Army’s AI investments—we know far less about China’s strategy for data collection and acquisition. Given China’s interest in integrating cutting-edge AI into its intelligence and military enterprise, that oversight represents a profound vulnerability for U.S. national security. Policymakers in the White House and Congress should thus focus on restricting the largely unregulated data market not only to protect Americans’ privacy but also to deny China a strategic asset in developing their AI programs.

China’s data-hungry AI projects

Attempts to discover how China’s security agencies are leveraging data for AI development are foiled by, among other things, a lack of international transparency around data flows as well as China’s own regulatory efforts. Domestically, China passed a major cybersecurity law in 2017 that dramatically increased data protection and data localization requirements for firms operating there. Internationally, China launched the Global Initiative on Data Security in September 2020, an effort designed in part to convince Belt and Road countries to adopt its data security practices and standards. The efforts lend credence to the importance of “data security” while nonetheless providing greater authorities and capabilities for Chinese officials and agencies to access individual-level data at home and abroad. 

China’s regulatory and policy efforts on data security have helped to accelerate its AI development, even as much of the data it uses remains opaque. Chinese authorities view automated mass surveillance systems as a tool to maintain the Communist Party’s hold on power. These systems are built on large stores of data—some of it acquired illicitly from U.S. companies and systems. By virtue of being home to nearly 20% of the global population, China has an advantage in its ability to gather a wide variety of data through multiple avenues. Combined with its Belt and Road Initiative, the Chinese government is laying what the UK foreign intelligence chief recently described as “data traps”—expansive efforts to collect critical data and undermine national sovereignty.

China’s most well-documented use of automated systems for social control is its genocidal campaign against the Uighur minority in Xinjiang. Systems there rely on up to 60 data points to determine if someone is in need of “reeducation,” as PBS Frontline reported in 2020. In order to build this system, Chinese developers and officials first had to define Uighur identity in a way that is comprehensible to a computer, requiring the collection of huge amounts of data to build the necessary algorithms. These data points include communication data, video surveillance, DNA samples collected at checkpoints, and whether someone has grown a beard or quit smoking. With this data, the Communist Party has built a surveillance machine and tool of social control that uses AI to identify individuals allegedly susceptible to radicalization and can even follow Uighurs around the world.  .... '