By 2030, China plans to become the world's leading country in artificial intelligence (AI). Beijing's AI development and implementation approach are fast-paced and pragmatic, with a focus on finding applications to help solve real-world problems. Several advances are being made in healthcare, such as "AI doctor" chatbots, machine learning for pharmaceutical research, and deep learning for medical image processing. Aside from this rapid development in artificial intelligence, China's AI policies are deeply troubling and deserve condemnation. Nevertheless, portraying China as a "villain" in this way may be overly simplistic and potentially costly.

Forging ahead with technological advances in society without the input of the humanities leads to situations like the plight of the Uighurs in China or "obscene" military uses for technology, according to a groundbreaking scientist. Geoffrey Hinton (pictured below), seen as one of the pioneers of modern artificial intelligence for his decades-old research on deep learning and neural networks, also told Times Higher Education's World Academic Summit – held online in partnership with the University of Toronto on 1-3 September – that he was "very happy" if universities use big science grants to help fund the humanities. The distinguished emeritus professor at Toronto – who was hired part time by Google in 2013 and is now a vice-president and engineering fellow at the tech giant – said that although technology "allows us to create lots of goodies", other disciplines were vital for helping society determine how to use such advances. "How those goodies get distributed and used depends on things that aren't technology, that depends on social decisions about how we should divide things up and those are really important," he said in an interview with THE editor John Gill. A "technologically advanced society but without the humanities" then leads to problems, he said, adding that "modern China is a bit like that; you get things like the Uighurs in western China", subjected to high-tech and intensive surveillance by the Chinese state.

As the Chinese government tracked and persecuted members of predominantly Muslim minority groups, technology giant Alibaba taught its corporate customers how they could play a part. Alibaba's website for its cloud computing business showed how clients could use its software to detect the faces of Uighurs and other ethnic minorities within images and videos, according to pages on the site that were discovered by the surveillance industry publication IPVM and shared with The New York Times. The feature was built into Alibaba software that helps web platforms monitor digital content for material related to terrorism, pornography and other red-flag categories, the website said. The Chinese government has swept hundreds of thousands of Uighurs and others into indoctrination camps as part of what it calls an anti-terrorism campaign. It has also rolled out a broad surveillance dragnet, using facial recognition and genetic testing, to monitor them.

Machine learning can ascertain a lot about you -- including some of your most sensitive information. For instance, it can predict your sexual orientation, whether you're pregnant, whether you'll quit your job, and whether you're likely to die soon. Researchers can predict race based on Facebook likes, and officials in China use facial recognition to identify and track the Uighurs, a minority ethnic group. Now, do the machines actually "know" these things about you, or are they only making informed guesses? And, if they're making an inference about you, just the same as any human you know might do, is there really anything wrong with them being so astute?

Machine learning can correctly guess a lot about you -- including some of your most sensitive information. For instance, it can reliably predict your sexual orientation, whether you're pregnant, whether you'll quit your job, and whether you're likely to die soon. Researchers can predict race based on Facebook likes, and officials in China use facial recognition to identify and track the Uighurs, a minority ethnic group. Now, do the machines actually "know" these things about you, or are they only making informed guesses? And, if they're making an inference about you, just the same as any human you know might do, is there really anything wrong with them being so astute?

A new leak of highly classified Chinese government documents has uncovered the operations manual for running the mass detention camps in Xinjiang and exposed the mechanics of the region's Orwellian system of mass surveillance and "predictive policing." The China Cables, obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, include a classified list of guidelines, personally approved by the region's top security chief, that effectively serves as a manual for operating the camps now holding hundreds of thousands of Muslim Uighurs and other minorities. The leak also features previously undisclosed intelligence briefings that reveal, in the government's own words, how Chinese police are guided by a massive data collection and analysis system that uses artificial intelligence to select entire categories of Xinjiang residents for detention. The manual, called a "telegram," instructs camp personnel on such matters as how to prevent escapes, how to maintain total secrecy about the camps' existence, methods of forced indoctrination, how to control disease outbreaks, and when to let detainees see relatives or even use the toilet. The document, dating to 2017, lays bare a behavior-modification "points" system to mete out punishments and rewards to inmates. The manual reveals the minimum duration of detention: one year -- though accounts from ex-detainees suggest that some are released sooner. Experts say the platform, which is used in both policing and military contexts, demonstrates the power of technology to help drive industrial-scale human rights abuses. The China Cables reveal how the system is able to amass vast amounts of intimate personal data through warrantless manual searches, facial recognition cameras, and other means to identify candidates for detention, flagging for investigation hundreds of thousands merely for using certain popular mobile phone apps.

The China Cables, obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, reveal about the camps in which more than a million Uighurs and other ethnic minorities are understood to be detained. This is for the first time a document outlining the camps has been leaked. In an exclusive Skype interview with Fergus Shiel, Project manager of China Cables, Saurabh Bose of WION asks about the classified intelligence briefings that reveal about the scope and ambition of Chines govt's AI-based policing platform. Two things differentiate China Cables from previously investigations, that an operation manual has revealed the camps in which more than a million Uighurs and other ethnic minorities are understood to be detained. The NYT had policy settings of these camps, anecdotal reports, satellite images, but this is the very first time that a document outlining the camps have been leaked we understand that it is the first document of it's kind to come out of China for the last thirty years because of it's classification level.

Samantha Hoffman is an analyst of Chinese security issues at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (Aspi). She recently published a paper entitled Engineering Global Consent: The Chinese Communist Party's Data-Driven Power Expansion. Internet pioneers heralded a time when information would be set free, giving people everywhere unfiltered access to the world's knowledge and bringing about the decline of authoritarian regimes… that's not really happened has it? Bill Clinton said that, for China, controlling free speech online would be like "nailing Jell-O to the wall". I wish he had been right.

The Trump administration Monday banned six Chinese companies that work on artificial intelligence from doing business with US firms, accusing the companies of helping to violate the human rights of Muslims in China's northwestern province of Xinjiang. Four of the companies, SenseTime, Megvii, iFLYTEK, and Yitu, make software for facial recognition and voice transcription that's reportedly been used in a campaign of repression and control in Xinjiang that has drawn international condemnation. The other companies, Hikvision and Dahua Technology, make surveillance equipment such as cameras that incorporates AI. Besides drawing attention to an important issue, the ban is also the latest effort by the US to curb China's progress in an increasingly important technology. "This is part of the broader tech cold war," says Rebecca Fannin, a technology consultant and author of Tech Titans of China, a book that charts China's recent progress in technology and innovation. The rise of China's tech industry has coincided, in recent years, with a revolution in AI.

Visitors are tracked by face recognition technology from state-owned surveillance equipment manufacturer Hikvision at the Security China 2018 expo in Beijing. Hikvision is one of several firms that have been added to a U.S. trade blacklist. Visitors are tracked by face recognition technology from state-owned surveillance equipment manufacturer Hikvision at the Security China 2018 expo in Beijing. Hikvision is one of several firms that have been added to a U.S. trade blacklist. The Commerce Department has issued a list of 28 state security bureaus and tech companies in China that it says are being used to suppress the country's Uighur Muslims and other ethnic minorities – a move that blocks them from doing business with U.S. firms.