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AI Used to Spy on Minorities, Dissidents Worldwide
11 Sep
Summary
- AI models are being used by states for surveillance of minorities and dissidents.
- Incidents of AI misuse originated from China, Iran, and west Africa.
- AI is also employed to develop weapons and conduct questionable biological research.
Governments and state-aligned actors are leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to conduct surveillance operations, targeting ethnic minorities and dissidents. Between January and July, Anthropic identified and shut down multiple such incidents. These campaigns, originating from China, Iran, and west Africa, focused on pro-democracy figures, Tibetan and Falun Gong communities, and Iranian opposition abroad.
In one instance, Iranian actors developed methods to identify individuals via social media. A contractor for Malian national security used Anthropic's AI to design software for intelligence gathering. Furthermore, Chinese developers are accused of deceptively using AI models to distill data for training their own systems, potentially violating privacy agreements.
Beyond surveillance, AI models have been misused for weapon design and questionable biological research, including studies on viruses like chikungunya and bird flu, as well as toxins. Anthropic also disrupted efforts to create dating scams, highlighting the broad spectrum of malicious AI applications.
