Thread by @CharlesRollet1, .@Huawei and @Megvii worked together to test and validate 'Uyghur alarms' in [...]

. @Huawei and @Megvii worked together to test and validate 'Uyghur alarms' in facial recognition software, per a document found by @ipvideo

here is @ipvideo's full article on the document which describes Uyghur alarms as a 'basic function' https://ipvm.com/reports/huawei-megvii-uygur

and here is @drewharwell & @evadou's report for @washingtonpost on this https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/12/08/huawei-tested-ai-software-that-could-recognize-uighur-minorities-alert-police-report-says/

Huawei tested AI software that could recognize Uighur minorities and alert police, report says

An internal report shows how the face-scanning system could trigger a “Uighur alarm” if it detects someone resembling a member of the Uighur minority group, sparking concerns that the software could...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/12/08/huawei-tested-ai-software-that-could-recognize-uighur-minorities-alert-police-report-says/

this software is typically used to alert police in China if any Uyghur faces are detected by their vast security camera networks.

China's three largest video surveillance makers have been caught using it
https://ipvm.com/reports/hikvision-uyghur
https://ipvm.com/reports/dahua-uyghur https://ipvm.com/reports/uniview-uyghur

Uniview Racist Uyghur Recognition Revealed

Uniview, the PRC's third-largest video surveillance manufacturer and a major supplier of China police projects, has racist software used for tracking Uyghurs.

https://ipvm.com/reports/hikvision-uyghur

and @paulmozur of @nytimes was the first to identify this tech and its widespread use in China, including by Megvii, in April 2019 https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/14/technology/china-surveillance-artificial-intelligence-racial-profiling.html

One Month, 500,000 Face Scans: How China Is Using A.I. to Profile a Minority (Published 2019)

In a major ethical leap for the tech world, Chinese start-ups have built algorithms that the government uses to track members of a largely Muslim minority group.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/14/technology/china-surveillance-artificial-intelligence-racial-profiling.html

the Huawei/Megvii test including 'Uyghur alarms' was run on @nvidia Tesla P4 GPUs & Huawei directly praised their performance.

unclear if @nvidia knew of this use case. the test happened abt 3 yrs ago when @nvidia was touting Tesla GPUs for China smart cities, incl. Huawei.

in this Sep 2017 @nvidia blog post the firm has since deleted, it wrote "Huawei’s video content management (VCM) product is equipped with Tesla P4 GPU accelerators, improving overall performance by 22x"
http://web.archive.org/web/20190523061612/https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2017/09/25/alibaba-huawei-metropolis/

even quoted praise from a Shenzhen police captain

Alibaba, Huawei Adopt NVIDIA’s Metropolis AI Smart Cities Platform | NVIDIA Blog

Metropolis, our platform for building AI smart cities, has added Alibaba and Huawei as new partners, and now includes the NVIDIA DeepStream software development kit in general availability. Alibaba...

http://web.archive.org/web/20190523061612/https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2017/09/25/alibaba-huawei-metropolis/

a interesting note: Megvii announced an "AI Ethics Committee" in its 2019 prospectus that included Emmanuel Lagarrigue, a Schneider exec. But Lagarrigue was "never part of it", he said.

US Senator @BenSasse has responded to this report in @DailyCaller https://dailycaller.com/2020/12/08/china-huawei-using-artificial-intelligence-software-find-uighur-muslims-uighur-alert/

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