How China's Government Is Using AI on Its Uighur Muslim Population

It's been estimated that China's government has detained as many as a million members of the country's Muslim population in so-called "re-education camps," in part of a campaign that has alarmed human rights activists across the world. This week, drawing on 403 pages of leaked government documents, The New York Times published new details of how the ongoing crackdown took shape under Chinese President Xi Jinping and other leadership in the Communist Party of China, how government workers who resisted the plan were sidelined, and what officials were instructed to tell young people whose families had been detained. "They're in a training school set up by the government to undergo collective systematic training, study and instruction," the talking points read, adding, "You have nothing to worry about." The Chinese government's campaign against those it says have been exposed to extremism is centered on an autonomous region, Xinjiang, where nearly half of the 25 million residents are a Muslim people called the Uighurs. Earlier in November, a FRONTLINE documentary called In the Age of AI examined how, as part of its crackdown involving the Uighurs, China's government has made Xinjiang a test project for forms of extreme digital surveillance.