China’s Security Industry Views US as Larger Threat than Artificial Intelligence

China’s security and surveillance industry, which has experienced rapid growth over the years, is now prioritizing the strengthening of its defenses against external threats such as the United States. This move is prompted by concerns over the potential risks posed by hackers, advancements in artificial intelligence, and pressure from competing governments.

The renewed emphasis on self-reliance, anti-fraud and anti-hacking systems was on display at the recent Security China exhibition in Beijing, illustrating how difficult it is to get Beijing and Washington to cooperate, even as scientists warn of shared risks to humanity. About AI. The presentation came just days after China’s ruling Communist Party warned authorities about the risks of artificial intelligence.

Ahead of the four-day meeting: China’s biggest geopolitical rival, the United States. American-developed AI chatbot ChatGPT was a frequent topic of discussion, as were US efforts to stifle China’s access to cutting-edge technology.

“This new technology carries a great potential danger,” said Fan Weicheng, director of Tsinghua University’s Public Security Research Center. He clicked on a presentation featuring an AI-generated character of Barack Obama speaking, illustrating the risks of misleading images and videos that can now be created digitally.

“The United States has a national security strategy for the 21st century. Russia has a national security strategy. Germany has a strategy. So is Japan,” Fan said. “We in China are also working on this.”

Fan says Chinese researchers are working on an “early warning system” to identify and control potentially disruptive technology, creating indexes and formulas to measure the impact of emerging technology on China’s national security.

Over the past decade, China’s AI technology has developed rapidly, fueled in part by collaboration with American research institutes and technology companies. As in the United States, Chinese leaders are concerned about the development of artificial intelligence.

But there is an added challenge. As geopolitical tensions have reached a fever pitch in recent years, Washington has moved to cut off China’s access to American technology, pushing Chinese tech companies toward self-sufficiency.

Comments at a meeting chaired by Chinese leader Xi Jinping last month called for a renewed focus on the potential risks of new technologies.

“The complexity and seriousness of the national security problems facing our country have increased dramatically,” the official Xinhua news agency said of the meeting. “We have to prepare for the worst case and extreme scenarios.”

China needs to develop locally made products and become self-sufficient, while keeping an eye on new developments coming from the West, visitors to the fair said.

“This is the era of artificial intelligence. The future has arrived,” said Liu Caixia, director of the Chinese Police Research Institute. “Members of the academic community feel fear.”

“We’ve seen in some sci-fi blockbusters that there are only intelligent machines in the world, and people are treated like pets,” said Liu. “What attitude should we adopt to deal with it?”

Liu’s answer was clear and in line with China’s determination to be at the forefront of cutting-edge technologies: Push forward and adopt artificial intelligence in new fields.

But it also reflects a conflict between China’s technological ambitions and deepening concerns about the potential social and political risks of such technologies. Chinese technology companies have approached chatbots like ChatGPT with caution, for example due to heavy censorship, as artificial intelligence is prohibited from creating politically sensitive content.

But ChatGPT begs the question: Should China rush to adopt AI and potentially fall victim to its pitfalls, or proceed cautiously and risk falling behind the US?

Across the Pacific, American technology leaders and policymakers are grappling with the same questions. Waves of US sanctions have targeted Chinese chipmakers and artificial intelligence companies to limit Beijing’s access to cutting-edge technology. Politicians are concerned about China’s growing position in the industry.

With friction between China and the United States at a boiling point, Foreign Secretary Antony Blinken visited Beijing this week to stabilize relations and sought to reassure Chinese counterparts that Washington is not looking to disengage from China – only to “de-risk and diversify”.

Although both sides declared the trip a success, Beijing expressed frustration with the US sanctions, with China’s top foreign affairs official, Wang Yi, calling on the US to “give up suppressing China’s technological development”.

Some experts believe that cooperation, not conflict, is necessary to confront what they see as a threat to humanity as a whole. Earlier this month, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman attended a conference hosted by the Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence to encourage cooperation between Chinese and American researchers to reduce AI risks.

“The stakes of international cooperation have never been higher,” Altman said, noting that China is home to some of the world’s best AI researchers. “We have to manage the risk together.”

Such concerns were echoed at the China conference, where leaders expressed concerns about the potential for AI-generated audio and images to be used in fraud, hacking and disinformation campaigns.

“The potential for fraud is very high,” said Li Congting, chief artificial intelligence researcher at video surveillance maker Uniview. “Lots of people have already played with ChatGPT. Everyone thinks its interactivity is really good, like there’s a real person behind it.”

US researchers and tech leaders, including high-level executives from Microsoft and Google, recently warned of the potential dangers of artificial intelligence.

Many Chinese scholars echoed these concerns. But there was little talk of cooperation with the United States at the Beijing fair.

“Technological innovation has become the main battleground of international geopolitics,” said Gao Lei, a senior official at a state-owned enterprise run by China’s Ministry of Public Security. The United States has “escalated its crackdown” on China’s technology industry, Gao said, saying it was “imperative” to replace American technology with local computer chips.

While both countries grapple with concerns about artificial intelligence, stark differences in their approaches to the technology make cooperation difficult.

China has built one of the world’s most intrusive digital surveillance systems, blanketing city streets and rural villages with cameras and tracking citizens using chat apps and cellphones.

The US government has sanctioned many Chinese technology companies for their role in Beijing’s crackdown on high-tech in China’s western Xinjiang region, where digital technology was used to report ethnic minorities for arrest, often under false pretenses.

Several companies at the fair had been sanctioned, including telecoms giant Huawei, camera maker Hikvision and surveillance specialist Meiya Pico. Meiya Pico’s representative declined to be interviewed by AP, citing a general ban on speaking with foreign media.

The use of police technology in the United States is limited by civil society and legal challenges. But that hasn’t stopped many from adopting questionable privacy-infringing technology, including facial recognition and proactive policing, drawing charges of hypocrisy and fueling suspicions in China that US sanctions are politically motivated.

Meanwhile, Chinese companies continue to deploy the technology in ways that Western lawmakers find troubling.

At the conference, one China Mobile researcher discussed the drones his company supplied to the Hong Kong police. They were used to track protesters during the 2019 anti-government protests, the researcher said. Advances in 5G communications technology mean that officers no longer need to operate drones in the field, but can do so from the comfort of their offices.

“With the click of a mouse, they can get drone footage from the field to their computer,” said researcher Su Yu. “This improves efficiency.”

According to experts, with tensions at an all-time high, it is an open question whether the two countries will find a way to cooperate.

“How do the United States and China coexist with such fundamentally different norms for the use of technology and society?” said Samm Sacks, a Yale Law School senior fellow who studies China’s technology policy. “We have to find a way forward. Politically, it won’t be easy.”