MIT’s involvement in developing surveillance technology for a Chinese company monitoring Uyghurs.
Prestigious university partnered with twice-sanctioned SenseTime to advance facial recognition technology
Uyghur men gather to pray in the far western Xinjiang province / Getty Images
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has collaborated with SenseTime, a Chinese company that has been sanctioned twice, to push the boundaries of facial recognition technology, according to a review by the Washington Free Beacon. The review discovered that SenseTime, China’s largest facial recognition company, made an undisclosed donation to MIT in 2018. The donation funded 20 out of 22 research papers that focused on or mentioned “neural networks,” a key component of facial recognition technology. Additionally, 14 of the papers covered image data or image recognition algorithms. Notably, two researchers associated with Zhejiang University, which works on classified projects for the Chinese military, co-authored one of the papers with MIT researchers on “artificial neural networks.”
While the specific use of the research funded by SenseTime remains unclear, it is worth noting that the company’s facial recognition technology has reportedly been utilized by China to commit human rights abuses against Uyghur Muslims. SenseTime’s technology is part of a secretive system employed by the Chinese government to track and control Uyghurs, as reported by the New York Times in 2019. Consequently, the Trump administration blacklisted SenseTime in 2019 for its involvement in the repression and surveillance of Uyghur Muslims. The Biden administration later banned U.S. investment in SenseTime in 2021.
SenseTime’s funding of MIT research exemplifies China’s ongoing efforts to influence American higher education and gain access to valuable intellectual property generated by U.S. universities. Over the past decade, China has contributed more to U.S. universities than any other foreign nation, as highlighted in a report by the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Some of these contributions come from individuals and groups associated with the Chinese military. For instance, a Chinese tech billionaire who aided the People’s Liberation Army in developing “force modernization plans” has donated $5 million to MIT and serves on advisory boards for Yale and Cornell, according to the Free Beacon.
The majority of the research papers funded by SenseTime at MIT revolve around neural networks, which play a crucial role in training systems to recognize complex facial patterns. The research also encompasses convolutional neural networks, which are particularly effective in image recognition. As MIT published its papers on neural networks and image recognition, SenseTime filed 47 patent applications with the World International Patent Organization for facial and image recognition technology utilizing neural networks.
In 2018, MIT and SenseTime announced their “Alliance on Artificial Intelligence” along with an undisclosed financial gift from SenseTime. MIT stated that the funds were used for unrestricted research. However, MIT reevaluated its relationship with SenseTime following the 2019 sanctions imposed by the Trump administration. The university only halted its SenseTime-funded research after the company faced additional sanctions two years later.
Despite the Biden administration’s 2021 sanctions on SenseTime, MIT chose not to return the gift. Instead, the university suspended any new uses of the funding and paused research proposals that could have been funded by the donation. MIT did not provide further details regarding the donation amount or the content of the research.
SenseTime is not the only controversial Chinese entity that MIT has collaborated with for research purposes. Two researchers associated with Zhejiang University, which supports three Chinese military research labs, co-authored one of the SenseTime-funded papers. Zhejiang University has been flagged by the U.S. government for engaging in scientific and economic espionage. In 2013, the FBI arrested a Chinese researcher for stealing U.S. cancer research to share with Zhejiang University.
Both the Biden and Trump administrations have recognized China’s treatment of Uyghurs as a genocide. Up to two million Uyghur Muslims are currently held in detention camps in Xinjiang, where they are subjected to political reeducation, forced labor, and forced sterilization. Xinjiang is not only known for its textile industry but also for its production of polysilicon, a key material used in solar panels.
SenseTime has vehemently denied the accusations against it, stating that they are unfounded and reflect a misunderstanding of the company. The company expressed regret for being caught in the midst of geopolitical tensions.
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