Mastering the ‘art of brainwashing,’ China fights AI censorship

China has once again expanded its censorship and surveillance policies as it seeks to keep artificial intelligence (AI) models under control while racing to advance the ever-expanding technology.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has introduced more regulatory measures to ensure its domestic tech companies adhere to the party’s ideological rules.

All AI companies are required to participate in a government review that analyzes companies’ large language models (LLMs) to ensure they “embody core socialist values,” as the Financial Times first reported last week.

A man walks past a photo of Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Communist Party of China Museum in Beijing on March 3, 2023. (Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images)

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China has long worked to suppress information accessible on the internet using its “Great Firewall” — which has been used to block a litany of material perceived as bad for the CCP, such as information surrounding the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre or memes comparing Chinese President Xi Jinping to Winnie the Pooh.

This firewall is being extended to the realm of AI as China rushes to advance its technologies while continuing to regulate the content it creates.

The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) is now requiring AI companies like ByteDance, Moonshot, and 01.AI to participate in a review process that analyzes how effective their programs are at censoring the LLMs they create.

Chatbot systems are being developed not only to collect sensitive keywords, but also to block information on questions relating to prohibited topics, often involving human rights queries.

AI systems in turn provide answers such as “try another question” or “I haven’t learned how to answer that question yet. I will continue to study to serve you better.”

But to prevent chatbots from blocking too many questions, CAC policies require LLMs to reject no more than 5% of all questions, according to the Financial Times report.

Chatbot systems are being developed not only to collect sensitive keywords, but also to block information on questions related to prohibited topics. (Getty Images)

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Instead, general answers considered politically correct have been created to address specific types of questions, although policing LLM answers is an uphill battle for developers.

China’s continued push to control speech among its own population speaks to a larger threat, AI expert Arthur Herman, senior fellow and director of the Quantum Alliance Initiative at the Hudson Institute, told Fox News Digital.

“This is the future that China has mapped out for its own citizens,” Herman said. “This is also how they envision being able to control other people’s worlds.”

Herman highlighted China’s growing relationship with the Global South, where social media platforms like WeChat have taken off.

“There will inevitably be social control, mind control, an element that will come into these programs… and that will shape a world that will increasingly look like what China wants it to look like,” he said.

Herman also warned that these strategies are not only playing out on internet platforms in authoritarian countries, but everywhere those platforms are accessible, including in the United States.

“They’ve become masters at brainwashing people with TikTok,” Herman said. “Chinese engineers have figured out a way to create a social media platform that is highly addictive and also very well-suited to brainwashing its users into seeing the world in a certain way and responding to visual and audio cues in a certain way.”

Chinese President Xi Jinping is seen leading other senior officials taking the party oath during a gala ahead of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China in Beijing on June 28, 2021. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

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Herman said China’s use of TikTok technologies is just a “taste” of how Beijing can use AI applications to manipulate populations beyond its borders.

“China sees AI as a way to change people’s mindsets,” he said. “The ability of AI to enhance these kinds of brainwashing and mind-control applications is so powerful … that even when you’re not under surveillance, even when you’re not listening to or watching government-inspired propaganda … there are other, more subtle ways in which your mind is being altered and adjusted simply by your interaction with the events of everyday life — which are increasingly being driven by how the Communist Party wants you to see the world.”