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How China uses AI to hunt down critics abroad

Who criticizes the leadership in Beijing? This question is to be answered in real time by an AI tool that analyzes foreign social networks.

(Bild: Four888 (computergeneriert) – stock.adobe.com)

Criticism of Xi Jinping's government is combated on the Chinese internet with censorship and the "great firewall", which keeps people away from Western services. Beijing is also increasingly interested in critics of the regime abroad. In a further step towards an AI dystopia, they are to be investigated and monitored using artificial intelligence.

Unbridled surveillance is already part of everyday life in China; video surveillance is omnipresent - often networked and equipped with facial recognition to track individual citizens at every turn. The Chinese are also transparent on the internet, using state-censored social networks and domestic online payment services. But the Chinese data octopus is insatiable, learning frightening new tricks thanks to AI algorithms - and increasingly extending its arms abroad. This is suggested by a worrying discovery made by an AI specialist in the USA.