China has once again expanded its policies of censorship and surveillance in an attempt to curb artificial intelligence (AI) models while fully embracing ever-expanding technological advances.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has introduced further restrictive measures to ensure the country’s tech companies adhere to the party’s ideological rules.
It was first reported that all AI companies will be required to take part in a government review that will analyze the companies’ large-scale language models (LLMs) to ensure they “embodied core socialist values.” Financial Times last week.
A man walks in front of a photo of Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Communist Party Museum in Beijing on March 3, 2023. (Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images)
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China has long used its “Great Firewall” to curb what information can be accessed on the internet, which it has used to block a variety of items deemed unfavorable to the Chinese Communist Party, including information about the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre and memes likening President Xi Jinping to Winnie the Pooh.
China is fast-tracking technological advances while controlling the content it produces, and this firewall is now being extended to the field of AI.
The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) is now requiring AI companies like ByteDance, Moonshot, and 01.AI to participate in a review process that will analyze how effectively their programs censor the LLMs they are building.
Chatbot systems are developed to not only collect sensitive keywords but also block information on questions related to prohibited topics, often including questions about human rights.
The AI system will spit out responses like, “Please try a different question” or “We haven’t learned how to answer this question yet. We’ll continue to learn to serve you better.”
However, to prevent the chatbot from blocking too many questions, the Financial Times reported, CAC policy states that LLMs must not reject more than 5% of all questions.
The chatbot system is developed not only to collect sensitive keywords but also to block information regarding questions related to prohibited topics. (Getty Images)
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Instead, blanket answers that are considered politically correct have been created to answer certain types of questions, but controlling the responses of LLMs is a difficult task for developers.
Arthur Herman, a senior fellow and director of the Quantum Alliance Initiative at the Hudson Institute and an AI expert, told Fox News Digital that China’s continued pursuit of censorship of speech among its own citizens speaks to a larger threat.
“This is the future China envisions for its people,” Herman said. “It’s also how they think they can control the rest of the world.”
Herman noted China’s burgeoning ties with countries in the global South, where social media platforms like WeChat are widespread.
“These plans will inevitably include elements of social control, mind control … to shape the world as China wants it to be,” he said.
Herman also warned that these tactics were not just being deployed on internet platforms in authoritarian countries, but wherever the platforms were accessible, including in the United States.
“They’ve mastered the art of brainwashing through TikTok,” Herman said. “Chinese engineers have discovered how to create a highly addictive social media platform that is also very focused on brainwashing users into seeing the world in a certain way and responding in a certain way to visual and auditory cues.”
On June 28, 2021, in Beijing, President Xi Jinping was photographed leading other senior Chinese officials in a pledge to the party during celebrations ahead of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
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Herman said China’s use of TikTok technology was just a “harbinger” of how Beijing could use AI applications to manipulate its citizens across its borders.
“China sees AI as a tool to change people’s minds,” he said. “The ability of AI to enhance these applications of brainwashing and mind control is so powerful that even if you’re not actually under surveillance cameras, even if you’re not actually hearing or seeing government-sponsored propaganda, there are more subtle ways in which your mind can be changed or conditioned simply by your interaction with events that are happening in your daily life, which are increasingly oriented by how the Communist Party wants you to see the world.”
