Several of the readings for this week discussed how developments in artificial intelligence (AI) technology is a double-edged sword, promising to make so many aspects of human life more efficient, convenient, and secure while creating new forms of threats – and raising uncharted legal questions. Many of these readings noted China’s ambitious AI strategy.
When we talk about China and AI, it’s usually in the context of protestors in Hong Kong or the Uighur minority population. We think immediately of the PRC’s odious use of facial recognition technology to track and suppress activists and political dissidents, or to assign social scores to reinforce “good behavior” among its population. China and AI, in the same breath, usually bring to mind the violation of civil liberties.
But this recent WaPo article describes another use of Chinese AI technology that will have decidedly positive consequences for international security: AI technology in agriculture and facial recognition for livestock.
Orwell’s nightmare? Facial recognition for animals promises a farmyard revolution.
The practice of tracking individual farm animals has several purposes, most of which are about optimizing agricultural production. But facial recognition to track individual cows, pigs, or other livestock can also help to identify signs of infection and illness in their earliest stages. With advanced AI technology, we could detect swine flu, bubonic plague, and even coronavirus in animals and stem diseases before they destroy food supply chains or spread to human populations. This technology could be tremendously consequential for global food security given that China feeds over 20% of the world’s population and, of course, would have positive consequences for global health. Imagine if signs of the novel coronavirus could have been identified by AI technology last year in the markets of Wuhan? It would have been a different 2020 indeed.
No one denies that AI technology has lots of positive uses, but China rarely gets good press in this area so I thought I’d highlight it.
Shana,
I think it is noteworthy that you chose to look at the positive side of the use of AI and facial recognition by the Chinese. As you point out, they have come in for a substantial amount of criticism for their use of these technologies to subjugate the Uighurs and, more recently, the citizens of Hong Kong. The fact that there is this (and many other) salutory uses of AI and facial recognition serves to underscore that, with a few exceptions (nuclear weapons technology perhaps being principal among them), most technologies are value-neutral. So it comes down to the manner in which they are used–or abused.
–Professor Wallerstein