cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/32830658
[This is an op-ed by Valentin Weber, senior research fellow with the German Council on Foreign Relations. He is the author of the International Forum for Democratic Studies report “Data-Centric Authoritarianism: How China’s Development of Frontier Technologies Could Globalize Repression.” His research covers the intersection of cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, quantum technologies, and technological spheres of influence.]
[…]
While the financial, economic, technological, and national-security implications of DeepSeek’s achievement have been widely covered, there has been little discussion of its significance for authoritarian governance. DeepSeek has massive potential to enhance China’s already pervasive surveillance state, and it will bring the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) closer than ever to its goal of possessing an automated, autonomous, and scientific tool for repressing its people.
[…]
With the world’s largest public AI-surveillance networks — “smart cities” — Chinese police started to amass vast amounts of data. But some Chinese experts lamented that smart cities were not actually that smart: They could track and find pedestrians and vehicles but could not offer concrete guidance to authorities — such as providing police officers with different options for handling specific situations.
[…]
China’s surveillance-industrial complex took a big leap in the mid-2010s. Now, AI-powered surveillance networks could do more than help the CCP to track the whereabouts of citizens (the chess pawns). It could also suggest to the party which moves to make, which figures to use, and what strategies to take.
[…]
Inside China, such a network of large-scale AGI [Artificial General Intelligence] systems could autonomously improve repression in real time, rooting out the possibility of civic action in urban metropolises. Outside the country, if cities such as Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia — where China first exported Alibaba’s City Brain system in 2018 — were either run by a Chinese-developed city brain that had reached AGI or plugged into a Chinese city-brain network, they would quietly lose their governance autonomy to these highly complex systems that were devised to achieve CCP urban-governance goals.
[…]
As China’s surveillance state begins its third evolution, the technology is beginning to shift from merely providing decision-making support to actually acting on the CCP’s behalf.
[…]
The next step in the evolution of China’s surveillance state will be to integrate generative-AI models like DeepSeek into urban surveillance infrastructures. Lenovo, a Hong Kong corporation with headquarters in Beijing, is already rolling out programs that fuse LLMs with public-surveillance systems. In [the Spanish city of] Barcelona, the company is administering its Visual Insights Network for AI (VINA), which allows law enforcement and city-management personnel to search and summarize large amounts of video footage instantaneously.
[…]
The CCP, with its vast access to the data of China-based companies, could use DeepSeek to enforce laws and intimidate adversaries in myriad ways — for example, deploying AI police agents to cancel a Lunar New Year holiday trip planned by someone required by the state to stay within a geofenced area; or telephoning activists after a protest to warn of the consequences of joining future demonstrations. It could also save police officers’ time. Rather than issuing “invitations to tea” (a euphemism for questioning), AI agents could conduct phone interviews and analyze suspects’ voices and emotional cues for signs of repentance. Police operators would, however, still need to confirm any action taken by AI agents.
[…]
DeepSeek and similar generative-AI tools make surveillance technology smarter and cheaper. This will likely allow the CCP to stay in power longer, and propel the export of Chinese AI surveillance systems across the world — to the detriment of global freedom.
[Edit typo.]
Inside China, such a network of large-scale AGI [Artificial Generative Intelligence] systems could autonomously improve repression
Wooooow.
AGI stands for Artificial GENERAL Intelligence not generative. Nice attempt to muddy the waters to confuse and scare people, given that much writing on AGI will talk about how dangerous it is.
“The terrorists are in possession of an A-Bomb [Asbestos Bomb]!”
Either this opinion author has no clue, or this is very deliberate misinformation.
Also: This ‘College Protester’ Isn’t Real. It’s an AI-Powered Undercover Bot for Cops So using ML to police citizens is literally already here.
Not sure if they’ve edited it, but right now it reads:
the historian George Dyson envisioned the internet as a sentient being that would one day reach artificial general intelligence (AGI)
[…]
Inside China, such a network of large-scale AGI systems could autonomously improve repression
The whole piece looks like written by, or with the use of, some LLM.
Other than that, there are two valid points that could be made:
- Massive application of AI to city-wide surveillance, with zero regards for privacy, could provide an AI agent system with enough compute power to self-train in realtime.
- DeepSeek is plausibly a Trojan horse, trained with a repression based bias, if not directly with hidden malware features.
The near future will see a soft “AI war” in the form of publishing models — to be used as agent cores — with different ideological biases.
Exactly. Well put.
Several months back, we had a user who would post articles about China almost every day, to several places across Lemmy. They did this for months straight, and eventually some other users showed up for a bit just like them. It took a lot of pushback for them to leave.
It was frustrating as hell, because suddenly I 1) couldn’t avoid hearing about China when I went on Beehaw, and 2) started to reflexively ignore any articles about China because I couldn’t trust them anymore. They were almost exclusively negative, they’d get posted ridiculously often, and occasionally they’d just be outright racist in the tried-and-true “we considered this acceptable/ignorable until it happened in China” sense. You don’t listen to people who post like that. Months after they left, I finally started to be able to actually take headlines about China seriously again, and it was nice!
And now here’s you, starting up almost the exact same posting pattern those users had. I don’t know if there’s a Lemmy instance somewhere that just has a bunch of folks like you and you keep wandering over here, or if you’re one of those users back with new account. I barely care which it is. I just really don’t want this shit back.
Please go find a hobby.
FYI: we’ve banned this user because after communicating our disinterest in being used as an anti-China dumping ground to shadowbox with people who can’t even see our instance, the user responded with a bunch of hostility about people pushing back on them.
I’m pretty sure the UK government would like to do this exact same thing tbh
Chinese cctv systems with AI are dangerous because they let the government watch their citizens for control and repression
Not like domestic drones, traffic cameras used for surveillance, DHS CCTV networks, the sea of cameras that every citizen owns that can be subpoenaed, and the WAMI program with automation software for tracking that has been deployed since 2013. Those are tools of freedom to keep Americans safe
Oh, no! Someone’s publishing open models better than our closed ones! How are we going to make profit now? Do something! Quick!!!
Amazing how this thread illustrates how many tankie alt accounts are here on Beehaw already.
tankie alt accounts
I don’t think that word means what you think it means.
Nobody here is saying Chinese authoritarianism is good, they are mostly pointing out that this op-ed is really, really bad and does not understand the technology, or pointing out that your post history/quality borders on racism. That doesn’t mean they are pro-authoritarianism, it just means they are pro well researched, quality posts and are already tired of the anti-China spam thanks to past accounts doing the same thing
Accusing people of bad faith without reason just because they disagree with you is one of the most disingenuous things you can do.
My opinion of your posts here was already low. This has not helped.
Accusing people of bad faith without reason just because they disagree with you is one of the most disingenuous things you can do.
I fully agree. Just read many of the comments about the linked article. They do exactly what you portray.
Many of the comments here provide salient criticism you’ve chosen to ignore. I don’t know why you’re even here anymore if you’re just going to fight everybody and plug your ears when they call you out.
Amazing how your post history illustrates you only care about one topic. Like the last time I saw one of your posts:
These articles are getting so obscure, that you probably had to peel through a good amount of stuff that people here would find way more relevant.
And based on other articles from this same website, they are American exceptionalists. And not competent about technology. Here is another article of theirs, “how autocrats weaponize AI”, which was published last month and refuses to mention the Trump administration among their list of autocrats.
The article is also extremely stupid, misrepresenting how Signal works.
Encryption apps like Signal use AI to ensure secure communication and protect activists from government surveillance.
I don’t know what the author was smoking when they wrote that, but Signal does not use any AI.
How much is the falun gong paying you?
The 50 cent warriors are somewhere else.
It also illustrates how nice and fat my blocklist is, as I keep trying to expand threads that never load.
Lol fud
