A Chinese company has been trying to develop artificial intelligence-powered technology that would enable authoritarian governments to not just monitor dissidents but also potentially predict who could become one in the future.
The work, which appears to be in the research stage, is ripped out of dystopian science fiction, offering a glimpse of a world in which an authoritarian state is able to move against its citizens before they begin any public dissent.
The Chinese company, Geedge Networks, sells a commercial version of the Great Firewall, the surveillance and censorship software that China uses to control online activity. Those tools allow governments to monitor internet traffic and flag when someone tries to get around traditional internet censorship.
But according to leaked company documents, the firm is working on new products that use artificial intelligence to examine location data and internet use to predict who could do or say something critical of the government, according to researchers at Vanderbilt University.
Such technology, if perfected, would give authoritarian governments a powerful tool to use against perceived enemies.
The idea that an authoritarian government would use artificial intelligence to suppress dissent is troubling enough. But the use of A.I. to predict dissent well before a person has taken action has become a nightmare scenario, according to some involved in the industry.
