Page 37 - Cyber Defense eMagazine December 2022 Edition

increasingly brushing against various sectoral data privacy regulations, Chinese developers face no such
restrictions. Beyond having access to the world’s largest population of 1.4 billion people, China’s leading
AI developers also benefit from legal and regulatory frameworks designed to advance Beijing’s
technological ambitions. These frameworks collectively require all data collected about Chinese citizens
be stored within the geographic borders of China and compels the sharing of that data with the Chinese
government.

The applicable data is not limited to Chinese citizens. Whenever TikTok users worldwide upload their
videos, ByteDance—TikTok’s parent company—adds to its dataset material for training its facial
recognition, voice recognition, and deep-fake technologies. Whenever cities in Africa or Asia install
HikVision cameras or Huawei servers as part of China’s “Safe City” products, the foreign data collected
add diverse inputs to China’s AI training datasets. Whenever women from around the globe provide blood
samples to China’s BGI Group for neonatal testing, the company harvests genetic sequences of millions
of women and children worldwide.

While the U.S. and other techno-democracies seek to use AI to advance societal interests, China is
plumbing the depths of the dark side of AI.

According to The Washington Post, Chinese security services are currently using the fruits of its data
collection to develop and deploy AI to identify, detain, and persecute its Uyghur Muslim population. So-
called “predictive policing,” China’s Ministry of Public Security leverages access to data about individual
Uyghur’s hobbies, occupations, familial ties, travel history, social media activities, and other traits to
predict acts of terrorism. Utilizing data collected from worldwide sources, Chinese technology companies
have developed facial recognition, gait recognition, and behavioral identifiers that are incorporated into
its nationwide surveillance system to identify Uyghurs assessed to pose a threat. As though taken from
the script of Minority Report, Chinese law enforcement use AI to identify and arrest Uyghurs their
algorithms predict will commit acts contrary to state interests. These individuals are then rounded up and
summarily sent to “re-education” camps.

The two uses of AI detailed in this article are intended to illustrate the crossroads the world faces.
Authoritarian systems of government readily lend themselves to mass surveillance, collection, and data
aggregation. Democratic systems, by contrast, place a premium on privacy and are generally resistant
to most forms of government surveillance. In the age of AI, where access to data will determine both
economic success and national security, this distinction places democracies at a disadvantage. As
regulators, lawmakers, and tech giants in democratic nations seek to develop the foundations for ethical
uses of AI, lawmakers and regulators need to establish a regulatory environment that gives western AI
developers access to sufficient data to compete with their Chinese counterparts.

For techno-democracies to thrive in the age of Artificial Intelligence, lawmakers and regulators should
seek to balance individual privacy with the society’s need to develop advanced technologies. Further,
regulations need to be established that enable companies that collect large and diverse datasets—from
personal information to genetic data—to share that data with AI developers in such a way that protects
privacy while encouraging innovation. Otherwise, the United States will cede AI superiority to China.

Cyber Defense eMagazine – December 2022 Edition 37
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