Microsoft’s China division cozy with China’s National University of Defense Technology

Microsoft’s AI division is working with a Chinese military university.  The work includes

matters related to facial recognition....In another interview last year CEO of Microsoft’s

China division Alain Crozier made some more admissions that sound even more startling

today — for example, that the viral Chinese-owned app TikTok — which is reportedly facing

a national security review by U.S. officials — was hatched in Microsoft’s China-based

Research & Development facility.  Crozier also boasted that Microsoft’s China-based R&D

center is the largest one outside the United States. https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2019/11/22/bokhari-microsoft-has-a-massive-china-problem/

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4-11-19

Between March and November three scientific studies were published which were co-written

by academics from the Microsoft Research Asia in Beijing.  Other researchers involved in the

studies had close affiliations to China’s National University of Defense Technology (NUDT). 

Senior fellow at the New America think tank and China tech expert Sam Sacks commented

on the possible issues of collaboration between Microsoft and the Chinese military-run

university, stating that the recently published papers raised “red flags because of the nature

of the technology, the author affiliations, combined with what we know about how this

technology is being deployed in China right now.”  Sacks added: “The [Chinese] government 

s using these technologies to build surveillance systems and to detain minorities [in

Xinjiang].”...

One of the papers that was co-authored by Microsoft and NUDT researchers investigated a new A.I. method of recreating detailed environmental maps through the analysis of human faces which experts believe could have direct applications for surveillance.  Pedro Domingos, a professor of A.I. at the University of Washington, commented on such applications stating: “Let’s suppose I’m an intelligence agency and I have pictures of people of interest; I can use the system to tell something about the place they’re in that they didn’t realize they were giving away.”

Other papers that Microsoft researchers worked on with NUDT researchers related to machine learning, an area of technology that could be used for censorship according to experts. Chinese military technology expert and fellow at the think-tank the Center for a New American Security, Elsa Kania, commented on this aspect, stating: “Machine reading comprehension may not seem directly concerning but it could be used for censorship, which is an interest of the Chinese government. They see natural language processing as a way to enable censorship at scale.”   Microsoft commented on the issue stating that its “researchers, who are often academics, conduct fundamental research with leading scholars and experts from around the world to advance our understanding of technology.”    https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2019/04/11/microsoft-worked-with-chinese-military-university-on-ai-development/