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China AI

'Pre-Crime' AI Is Driving 'Industrial-Scale Human Rights Abuses' In China's Xinjiang Province (icij.org) 102

Posted by EditorDavid from the mass-internment dept.
Long-time Slashdot reader clawsoon writes: Among Sunday's releases from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists on leaked Chinese documents about the detention of Xinjiang Uighurs — which they are calling the largest mass internment of an ethnic-religious minority since World War II — is a section on detention by algorithm which "is more than a 'pre-crime' platform, but a 'machine-learning, artificial intelligence (AI), command and control' platform that substitutes artificial intelligence for human judgment...."
"The Chinese have bought into a model of policing where they believe that through the collection of large-scale data run through AI and machine learning that they can, in fact, predict ahead of time where possible incidents might take place, as well as identify possible populations that have the propensity to engage in anti-state anti-regime action," reports James Mulvenon, director of intelligence integration at SOS International LLC, an intelligence and information technology contractor for several U.S. government agencies. "And then they are preemptively going after those people using that data."

The Chinese government responded by calling the leaked documents "fake news."
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'Pre-Crime' AI Is Driving 'Industrial-Scale Human Rights Abuses' In China's Xinjiang Province More

'Pre-Crime' AI Is Driving 'Industrial-Scale Human Rights Abuses' In China's Xinjiang Province

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  • Self Fulfilling Prophecy (Score:4, Interesting)

    by SirAstral ( 1349985 ) on Saturday November 30, 2019 @02:43PM (#59471210)

    One of humanities most enjoyable past times. Name a bias and you get this right here. Nazi, racist, phobes, terrorist, bigot, hypocrits... i mean they all fit here.

    In an effort to reduce crime and unwanted activity the government is going to literally bring about what generates unrest. People will get tired of this and will eventually openly resist and make it clear it is better to die than exist like this. Unfortunately that takes a very long time to happen though. Which brings up the next common human failure... waiting until it is too late before doing anything to stop problems like this. People literally have to die first.

    Take WWII, no one would have cared about the extermination of the Jews... they only cared because Germany actually invaded everyone in a guaranteed to fail move. China is already on the cusp of doing this very thing and no one... including all those vaunted... "human rights" groups give nearly a second thought.

    China is living proof of how shallow the virtue signalling has become from all the people and nations of the world.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by lgw ( 121541 )

      Name a bias and you get this right here. Nazi, racist, phobes, terrorist, bigot, hypocrits... i mean they all fit here.

      Isn't it strange that the Western press almost never mentions the Uighurs? China has 3 million people in death camps as part of a genocidal purge, right down to Nazi-style medical experimentation. It's remarkably easy to get an organ transplant in China. And this is all worth a collective shrug from the mainstream media.

      I mean, it's one thing to say "China's not really Communist", which is silly but whatever, it's quite another to defend death camps to defend Communism! But that's what the mainstream ne

      • Re:Self Fulfilling Prophecy (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Immerman ( 2627577 ) on Saturday November 30, 2019 @03:43PM (#59471422)

        >Isn't it strange that the Western press almost never mentions the Uighurs?

        Why? Where's the profit in mentioning the Uighurs? They had their 15 minutes of fame, talking about them more wouldn't sell ads. They're too far away in space and culture to generate the amount of engagement that celebrity gossip or a gruesome local murder will.

      • Re:Self Fulfilling Prophecy (Score:5, Informative)

        by HiThere ( 15173 ) <[ten.knilhtrae] [ta] [nsxihselrahc]> on Saturday November 30, 2019 @04:03PM (#59471482)

        What is the basis for thinking that China, or any other country sized entity, has ever been communist? Certainly not their name, unless you want to consider North Korea to be a Democracy.

        It is my assertion that Communism cannot scale to much more than the size of a large village, and even then it's unstable. It is much more adapted to the size of a large family.

        The name is not the thing.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Empiric ( 675968 )

          What is the basis for thinking that China, or any other country sized entity, has ever been communist?

          I hope you are joking, or mean "true Communist" in some sort of "No True Scotsman" way.

          Otherwise, it's a rather disturbing display of unawareness of history. [wikipedia.org]

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by HiThere ( 15173 )

            The name is not the thing.

            For awhile the Oneida community was communist, though not Marxist. This was unstable, however.
            China....having a group named Communist doesn't make that group communist. A dictatorship is not communist. There have been several actual communist communities, all were small, and most lasted less than a generation. But smaller communist groups are more stable. There are many families that, essentially, practiced communism within the family, though the children always object, but th

            • I've heard it said that we are naturally communist with our family, socialist with our friends, and capitalist with everyone else. That seems to fit with my experience, though I don't know that capitalist specifically fits with the third option. Some more general version of that, I don't know.

            • So you're some sort of proto-Trotskyite or what??

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by HiThere ( 15173 )

                You don't seem to be able to read. I do not believe that communism *can* scale. I am clearly not recommending that it do so.

                P.S.: The US governmental form is neither Democracy nor Republican, though admittedly it's closer to Republican. But not hugely so. This is probably necessary, as I don't feel that either of those forms could scale to a nation the size of the US. I doubt that they could scale to the size of California. New York would likely put a severe strain on them. Vermont is probably the s

      • The western media only care about issues related to Donald Trump. Either to attack him or defend him. Whatever else you can say about this situation it is only tangentially related to the President so therefore the media is not interested.

        There used to be a time when the media cared about things outside of the beltway. But today unless it can be used as a partisan cudgel the story dies a quick death.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gtall ( 79522 )

        Uh....there's been articles in NYTime and WPost at least once a week. Maybe you'd like volunteer to go to their province and report back from the scene of the crimes.

      • Isn't it strange that the Western press almost never mentions the Uighurs?

        I have seen over a dozen stories about the Xinjiang camps in the last few weeks. If you aren't seeing them, perhaps you should get out of your current news bubble.

        China has 3 million people in death camps as part of a genocidal purge

        Most estimates are about one million, they are are not "death camps", and there is no "genocide".

        What is actually happening is bad enough without silly hyperbole.

        By far the best reporting has come from Radio Free Asia [wikipedia.org] which has Uyghur speaking reporters on the ground in Xinjiang, at great risk to themselves and their families.

      • Take a look at their recent AMA on Reddit, and pay careful attention to the comments that criticize the narrative being pushed by ICIJ and other Western news organizations. https://www.reddit.com/r/world... [reddit.com] Don't take their word for it, and don't take mine either. Please do your own research regarding the criticisms, but prepare to be surprised at what you find out, because it calls into question whether anything being printed by these organizations, which are owned by a handful of people, is actually

      • I see constant stories of Hong Kong protesters, and the plight of the Uighurs, in the American media that I read.

        Which, coincidentally, is mostly very progressive outlets. The ones you accuse of "defending Communism".

        Have you tried actually reading them, instead of going with what Fox and Breitbart tell you they post?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gtall ( 79522 )

      You seem to be missing the point that the CCP is merely trying it out on the Uyghars to perfect it. Once it works there on people they don't care about, they'll start applying it to the people the do care about...very much. The CCP is afraid of its own shadow and those thugs will stop at nothing to preserve their position in the state.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Alwin Henseler ( 640539 )

      Which brings up the next common human failure... waiting until it is too late before doing anything to stop problems like this. People literally have to die first.

      Individuals mean nothing to the Chinese government. And there's enough of them to consider any single Chinese expendable.

      It's also a cultural thing: in western societies, individual liberties are considered of the utmost importance. The state can only interfere in private matters if there's a pressing need, or the individual liberties of other people are threatened. Not so in China: the state / country / community is considered the most important. If there's a conflict between that and individual freedom

      • Yes, but the Han Chinese are a super-majority in most of China and part of the government's actions are to spread the Han majority out to dilute all the National minorities.

    • >In an effort to reduce crime and unwanted activity the government is going to literally bring about what generates unrest. People will get tired of this and will eventually openly resist and make it clear it is better to die than exist like this.

      I sure hope you're right. Otherwise other governments are going to get a lot more enthusiastic about the idea. That's generally eventually what happened in the past, but in the past you had to wait for troublemakers to become a problem and draw attention to th

      • Actually, history suggests that it is hard to get people riled up when life is hard and unpleasant, when their primary concern is where their next meal is coming from. The French Revolution was not brought about by the grinding poverty of the poor. It was brought about by the second sons of the merchant class, who had enough money to be idle much of the time but no purpose in life (their older brothers were busy being trained to take over the family business). A similar thing can be seen in the overthrow

        • Historically, yes. But historically "life is hard" meant starvation was an imminent (or at least not distant) threat. That imparts an urgency to survival that makes politics mostly too expensive to indulge in.

          Today though, we live in a time when obesity is the leading health crisis amongst the poor. "Life is hard" today, I think, ranks right around "prime agitation" - especially for those facing a long slog up the shallow end of income distribution, or trapped at the edge of the welfare cliff. People w

          • Except in your original comment you said that people in that situation nobody is willing to rock the boat.

            • No, I said:
              > We're comfortable, safe, and have lots of opportunities to try to make our lives even better. Nobody is willing to risk throwing that away in order to get our democracy back.

              There's a huge gap between "Survival takes all the energy I have" and "I'm comfortable, safe, and have ample opportunities". At either end of the spectrum you're not likely to get rebellion (infighting amongst the aristocrats notwithstanding). Rebellion foments where people's survival is assured enough to give them fre

    • Well said, although I feel like pointing out that Germany "invading everyone" was most certainly not guaranteed to fail. It could have (unfortunately) very much exceeded if it was not for some very dumb moves made by the Third Riech (Hitler included) among other things including random weather events that influenced the outcome of battles, etc. Yes, the invasion of Russia was almost certainly guaranteed to fail but they could have foregone that campaign and re-directed their efforts back towards the Western

  • "I was just following orders." --Germany 1945

    "I was just doing what the AI said." --China 2019

    • "Giuliani does not follow my orders" --US 2019

    • Re:Everything old is new again (Score:4, Insightful)

      by sg_oneill ( 159032 ) on Saturday November 30, 2019 @03:34PM (#59471384)

      Its the infernal genius of this oppression. "I was just following the AIs orders".

      Lets say you have a battlefield of the not too distant at all future, and soldiers go onto the battle field, and an order comes in from AI command "Shoot everyone in this village, the algorithm detects that they are Jihadis". Later down the track it turns out its a village of vegetarian Sufi pacifists who think terrorism is evil and are only shy of american soldiers is due to their pacifist beliefs.

      Well heads are going to roll right? But who takes the blame here. The soldier is just "following orders" under the mistaken intelligence that its full of terrorists. What about the brass who made the order then? Well Its a robot. How do you drag a robot in front of a court marshall?

      Thats where it gets scary. You have a system that nobody is responsible for anymore. Oh you could yell at the manufacturer. Sure. But you'd struggle to drag a computer programmer in front of a judge and get a conviction on this. He didnt know the computer wanted to murder the hippies. Theres just nobody to take the blame. And that means theres no repurcussions. Well outside of an revenge fueled foreverwar that suits the military industrial complex just fine.

      Here be dragons.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gtall ( 79522 )

        It would make no difference to the CCP if they knew the village of vegetarian Sufi pacifists were what they are. Maybe you recall how the CCP got their panties in a twist because Falun Gong was doing calisthenics in the parks. There's nothing groups of people gathered together doing anything but bending over for the CCP that doesn't scare them.

      • Thats where it gets scary. You have a system that nobody is responsible for anymore. Oh you could yell at the manufacturer. Sure. But you'd struggle to drag a computer programmer in front of a judge and get a conviction on this. He didnt know the computer wanted to murder the hippies. Theres just nobody to take the blame. And that means theres no repurcussions. Well outside of an revenge fueled foreverwar that suits the military industrial complex just fine.

        Nonsense. Either the AI deployed is smart enough, in which case it would have to answer to its own actions. F**ked up bigtime? Face having the plug pulled.

        Or it's not. In which case it's just a tool. Someone, somewhere deployed that tool. It backfired? Person who deployed the tool is on the hook.

        • Person who deployed the tool is on the hook.

          But they have perfect plausible deniability. "I didn't know it would do THIS". Everyone can point the finger at each other, and at the end, if anyone is going to get thrown under the bus it'll be some poor GI who really was just following orders. 0% chance that the senior brass who deployed it, or the billionaire military industrialists who built it will ever face repercussions. At worse they get a bad story written in the press and congress tells them they need

      • This echoes what already exists with limited companies. Their liabiilty is limited; they can commit mayhem but the shareholders are largely immune. By design. And companies have committed crimes that are arguably genocide, before. The East India Company being the best known example.

        • even in more recent times, Elf Aquitaine (aka ELF, now part of the TOTAL group) was deploying its private intelligence agency and mercinaries into africa to cause mayhem and wreck political processes to protect its oil interests. That was in the 1990s.

  • Soon coming to a democracy near you.

    In the infinite quest of the national security people everyone is a data point.

    • Soon coming to a democracy near you.

      Ubiquitous Ring + Consolidated Police Mugshot Databases + Facial Recognition + Pre-Crime AI =

      The ability to stop pre-criminals from committing pre-crimes in front of your house.

      If the stranger gets an potential criminal rating of 90% or above, you are allowed to "stand your ground", and fire away.

      The next version of Ring will add a DNA sampler to the doorbell button, so it can be universally collected and analyzed.

      Folks may be freely walking despite that their DNA identifies them as potential pre-crimin

      • People already paid to submit their DNA to online databases. No really, they PAID to submit it. Welcome to 2020.

      • You forgot the party where law enforcers can't be bothered to stop pretty criminals, even tho their identities are well known.

        And also the part where serious dangerous organized criminals have a perfect Social Credit Score, and are rated 0% pre-crime by the magic all-knowing computer.

  • ... may they develop a space-based EMP device and test it on China. Nothing smells better than Korean-style fried surveillance networks. Korean BBQ, baby!

  • AI? (Score:3)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Saturday November 30, 2019 @02:59PM (#59471266)

    FFS is the following an AI algorithm?

    While (person.religion)
    {
                        person.educate()
    }

    • FAKE NEWS (Score:1, Interesting)

      by StopFakeNews ( 6423422 )
      Religion actually doesn't have anything to do with this situation. Just look at the Hui. They're Muslims living in China, and they aren't facing any of this sort of persecution. What the Western "free press" isn't telling you is that this is actually about stopping the terrorist groups that happen to be predominantly Uighers, and mostly operate in Xinjiang. This is a prime example of why ethical journalism is so important, and this should be a wake up call to anybody who blindly believes what's being print

  • Look to see who wants this in your gov (Score:4, Informative)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Saturday November 30, 2019 @02:59PM (#59471268)

    We deride China for this but how far away is the U.S. from a similar situation?

    So the people of the U.S, and really now any country, need to think carefully about who is really pushing in this direction...

    If you are arguing against free speech of any kind, you are pushing the U.S. (or your own country) in this direction.

    If you support government control over any aspect society, you are pushing in this direction.

    It turns out to be far too easy to fall into Fascism, so put down the red/blue glasses and be watchful for people of all parties to who government indoctrination camps sound like a great idea, for one particular group they feel like "thinks wrong".

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      In this, the Chinese are ahead of the rest of the world. Unfortunately, it looks like the general population in the west and other places is (again) far, far to stupid to do anything about the next global wave of authoritarianism and fascism and is instead cheering in on. Hence I expect the Chinese will do a brisk business selling this tech to other nation in the not too distant future.

    • The US has already done that, but much more effectively. There are lots of people here who want to divide us. They want to put us into our own "special groups". Then each "group" is then pitted against each other. The people at the top just laugh and collect the profits.

      • The US has already done that, but much more effectively.

        The virtual groups the government attempts to place us all in, are a far cry from very real labor/re-education camps the Chinese are really using today. By trying to claim what the west has is anything like China, is to minimize how deep it is possible to slide.

        Also what the Deep State has done to the U.S. has been very ineffective, because the population is anything but controlled, it is roiling.

    • Fascism literally is the red glasses.

  • The seemingly boundless desire for people to tell other people how they should live their lives is ultimately at fault.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Could not agree more. Fascism, totalitarianism, authoritarianism, religious extremism of any kind, all the same scum that cannot tolerate others having their own ideas about life.

    • Not just tell them how they should live, but force them to live a certain way. That is what power is.

  • Translation: Software that uses universal functions used to detect patterns to predict "criminal" actions in people precisely like the brain of any cop with the same information in the world. Except it is used to excert totalitarian control over people, imprison, torture and butcher them like the Nazis, Soviets, Japanese and Americans around WWII, Yugoslavians, Ruandans, Kongolese, and pretty much every other warmongerer or ancient empire ever did. But we are told by our pre-thinkers, of all the monsters,

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Z80a ( 971949 )

      Names and labels are not that important, they're just the excuse.
      It's just a simple "the more power you give to an individual or close knit group, the more horrid things they will do with it".
      "The magic of capitalism" only happens as long the market have a lot of competitors, as they do good things to try to get to the absolute power, but as soon they turn into mega monopolies, the magic is gone.

  • Do the people making it believe in it, I wonder? (Score:3)

    by clawsoon ( 748629 ) on Saturday November 30, 2019 @03:34PM (#59471382)
    I wonder if someone is making a profit off of this, spouting bullshit AI buzzwords to credulous government officials. I wonder if they're a true believer in the AI or if they just don't care that they're responsible for the arrests of hundreds of thousands of innocent people.
  • real life/time experience US Big Tech is getting working with the Chinese Communist and the PLA. Should have it perfected, by the time they bring their version of socialism to the US.

    Just my 2 cents ;)

  • These sci-fi films and TV series were trying to indicate that pre-crime and social scores were destructive ideas and not ones to be followed. of course there are those who donâ(TM)t seem to about consequences, as long as it appears to work.

  • Misleading summary/title? (Score:3)

    by DrMrLordX ( 559371 ) on Saturday November 30, 2019 @04:31PM (#59471524)

    They're making it sound like China is relying on AI to determine who will commit crimes in the future. The PRC has already determined that faithful Muslim Uighurs are criminal just for being Muslim. Their data-driver detention techniques only seek to confirm whether they meet those criteria. For example, they often detain people for no reason other than having the Zapya app on their phone.

    Uighurs who adopt Han cultural norms and who do not show an avid interest in religious life will probably be left alone . . . unless the education camps have some beds that need to be filled.

  • If there's one thing the past few years... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Mascot ( 120795 ) on Saturday November 30, 2019 @05:25PM (#59471640)

    ...has taught me, it's that when someone discredits a claim by stating "fake news", more often than not a more accurate response would have been "touché."

  • Destroyed the industrial and manufacturing middle class of America,
    Markets flooded with dangerous shit quality crap.
    US Lap dog politicians and media sucking the ruling parties cock then wiping their chin with a grin.

  • I have been concerned about this topic for some time, even predating "AI" I hate marketing monikers such as AI, the Cloud, even free. Lord, the stuff that was supposed to free us to express, explore, and grow appears destined to become the very thing that suppresses people and cultures. The Have's and the Have Not's of the modern age. Now you introduce national governments to the equation, obviously slow on the up take over commercial endeavors, and they seem to think they own everyone and everything, s

  • Expect abuse from any government that feels threatened. The "enlightened" countries don't know how it feels when the velvet glove comes off because the population remains highly compliant.

    And let's not fret about the Uighurs, they're not so helpless [reuters.com] as the war mongers in the *West* want us to believe.

  • The justification for most (all?) licensing requirements in the West is: "What if some moron does foo, which will injure his customers/neighbors/family?" What if a hairdresser does not sterilize his tools? What if a taxi driver works drunk (or otherwise impaired)? What if a gun-owner shoots up a supermarket?

    It is especially bad for professional licenses [yale.edu], but personal freedoms are quite impaired too.

    That's pre-crime right there... Fortunately, the punishment is fairly benign — you lose "only" your righ

  • In the original story Minority Report a computer AI predicted the crimes,not people.

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