Beijing
(AFP) - Microsoft has been collaborating with researchers linked to a Chinese
military-backed university on artificial intelligence, elevating concerns that
US firms are contributing to China's high-tech surveillance and censorship
apparatus.
Over the past year, researchers at
Microsoft Research Asia in Beijing have co-authored at least three papers with
scholars affiliated with China's National University of Defence Technology
(NUDT), which is overseen by the Central Military Commission.
The research covers a number of AI
topics, such as face analysis and machine reading, which enables computers to
parse and understand online text.
While it is not unusual for US and
Chinese scholars to conduct joint research, Microsoft's work with the
military-backed NUDT comes amid increasing scrutiny around China-US academic
partnerships, as well as China's high-tech surveillance drive in the northwest
region of Xinjiang.
"The new methods and technologies
described in their joint papers could very well be contributing to China's
crackdown on minorities in Xinjiang, for which they are using facial
recognition technology," said Helena Legarda, a research associate at the
Mercator Institute for China Studies, who focuses on China's foreign and
security policies.
"Many of these advanced
technologies are dual-use, so they could also contribute to the PLA's (People's
Liberation Army's) modernisation and informatisation drive, helping the Chinese
military move closer to the 2049 goal of being a world-class military,"
she added.
In an email, a Microsoft spokesman
told AFP that the company's researchers "conduct fundamental research with
leading scholars and experts from around the world to advance our understanding
of technology."
In each case, the research
"fully complies with US and local laws" and is published to
"ensure transparency so everyone can benefit from our work," he said
Thursday.
-'Raw
material'-
The growing concerns around human
rights violations in Xinjiang have also added pressure to US firms with
business in the region, where some one million Uighurs and other mostly Muslim
Turkic language-speaking minorities are held in re-education camps, according
to a UN panel of experts.
In February, US biotechnology
manufacturer Thermo Fisher announced it would stop selling equipment used to
create a DNA database of the Uighur minority to China.
That same month, a security
researcher exposed a massive database compiled by Chinese tech firm SenseNets,
which stored the personal information and tracked the locations of 2.6 million
people in Xinjiang.
At the time of the data leak,
Microsoft was listed as one of SenseNets' partners. The company declined to
comment.
But experts have also stressed
that, in the case of NUDT, Microsoft's co-published work is open and publicly
accessible.
"The authors are basically
sharing with the rest of the world how to replicate their approaches, models,
and results," said Andy Chun, an adjunct computer science professor at City
University of Hong Kong.
That allows others to potentially
"build upon, enhance and expand this research," he said.
Microsoft Research Asia also tends
to focus on long-term research or projects that are not immediately
transferable to applications, such as those that could be used to monitor or
suppress a population of people, pointed out Yu Zhou, a professor at Vassar
College, who studies globalisation and China's high-tech industry.
And while such concerns are
certainly valid, it may be difficult for AI researchers to avoid China, she
told AFP.
"It's a field where Chinese
researchers have made quite a lot of advancements, and they are generating data
which is the raw material for this industry -— so how are you going to avoid
that?"
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