דוח: המשטר הסיני משתמש ב-AI לצורך ריגול ואיסוף מידע ברחבי העולם

While some use AI to do research for their exams or find nearby tourist hotspots, malicious actors are using it to spy on people around the world, even here in the U.S. That's according to a new report by Anthropic. China-based accounts aligned with or tied to the Chinese Communist Party are using Anthropic's AI model, Claude, as a tool of surveillance and transnational repression. Joining us now is Rex Lee. He's a cybersecurity advisor to MySmartPrivacy and a tech journalist. Rex has advised major corporations and government agencies on tech espionage by the Chinese regime. Rex, thanks for joining. Anthropic says they've banned accounts that they believe are linked to a CCP-aligned intelligence operation that targets Falun Gong practitioners, Tibetans, Catholics across Asia, and others as well. These accounts were collecting personal information, info on religious venues, details about the target's activities. So how concerning is it that AI is being used to this end, in your view? Well, it's very concerning. The one thing that we have to look at is the underlining business model that's supporting most AI-infused apps and platforms today, which is surveillance capitalism itself. So that means that all of our apps and platforms on our phones, our computers, have all been infused with AI today, whether it's Claude or ChatGPP or Microsoft's version of AI or Apple. All of these apps and platforms are infused with AI today, but they are being supported by a targeted advertising business model rooted in surveillance capitalism, enabling the developers to monitor, track, and monetize the end user, while bad actors can also take advantage of these capabilities to also do the same thing through the apps. They can even compromise the apps and operating systems today, like Android, iOS, and Windows, to launch attacks on networks and critical infrastructure. Yeah, and as we were discussing, the targeted Falun Gong practitioners and companies affiliated with them, like Shen Yun Performing Arts or even this very station, NTD, the Chinese Communist Party started persecuting Falun Gong, this peaceful mind-body meditation practice, in 1999 after its popularity exploded. So is AI now making it easier for the CCP to carry out this repression within and outside of China, in your view? Yes. These practices go back to, I think the public very first heard of political indoctrination and ideological manipulation through the Facebook Cambridge Analytica scandal. About 10 years ago, I was a former advisor to the U.S. Senate for Facebook Cambridge Analytica, and it was based on exactly what the Chinese Communist Party is doing today, and has been doing, and also Russia and other bad actors. You can utilize these features within these apps to manipulate people through political and ideological indoctrination. AI takes it one step further. A lot of people don't know this, but there's technology that was discovered in 1966 by MIT AI researcher Joseph Weizenbaum, which was AI indoctrination called the Eliza Effect, which was the name of the very first chatbot. So again, you can use the Eliza Effect to start to politically indoctrinate people or indoctrinate them with ideological ideology and so forth. But also, you can utilize the technology to track and identify groups of dissenters or targeted political groups. We saw this regarding the Facebook Myanmar scandal as well, where Facebook users were targeted by the government, and that led to genocide as reported by Amnesty International. But AI simply takes it to another level.