A study published by US-based think tank RAND Corp on Thursday last week found that China is developing ways of using artificial intelligence (AI) tools like ChatGPT to influence public perceptions of Taiwan via social media. Beijing is seeking to influence public opinion on both a domestic and international scale, which social media platforms are not well-equipped to defend against, the study said, adding that AI could improve the believability of China-produced content, while reducing costs.
A RAND study in 2021 found that China was “treating Taiwan as a test bed for developing attack vectors using disinformation on social media,” showing that Beijing’s use of AI is just the latest development in a long-term strategy. The study suggested that it would likely adapt its disinformation campaign against US targets in a conflict or crisis, and that those targets would likely include Chinese-American military officers and personnel and their families. This shows that while Taiwan faces an immediate threat from Chinese disinformation campaigns — particularly in the run-up to the presidential election in January — the US and other nations friendly to Taiwan are also vulnerable, and should work closely with Taiwan to tackle the issue.
The Taiwan AI Center of Excellence, which is focused on boosting the nation’s AI capabilities, opened in March and is expected to produce tangible results in the development of a Taiwan-made chatbot similar to ChatGPT by the year’s end, National Science and Technology Council Minister Wu Tsung-tsong (吳政忠) said. AI can have profitable applications in targeted advertising and automatic content creation and editing, which would serve as motivation for industry investment. Yet AI can also have national security applications, such as identifying vulnerabilities in computer systems and flagging malicious content.
China heavily polices domestic social media usage by banning most platforms, forcing citizens to rely on platforms such as WeChat, which is monitored and censored by China’s government. China takes advantage of Taiwan’s free access to information to spread disinformation on platforms such as Line and the Professional Technology Temple, Taiwan’s largest online bulletin board system. An article posted on the US government-affiliated Army University Press Web site listed disinformation on those platforms in recent years, including claims that China rescued stranded Taiwanese tourists in Japan during Typhoon Jebi in September 2018, or that Taiwan’s government lied about the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths in Taiwan.
The US government has since 2016 cooperated with Taiwan in combating disinformation through the US Congress-established Global Engagement Center, it said. Washington could do more by supporting relationships between US-based social media companies and the Taiwanese government and civic groups, and pursuing AI codevelopment, it suggested.
Taiwan should do what it can to facilitate such cooperative engagements with the US, given the shared interest in countering Chinese propaganda. AI could be an effective tool in countering China’s AI use. AI is scalable, self-learning, allowing for logarithmic advancements in its capabilities, and resource-efficient. Through social media platform cooperation, AI could be deployed to flag potentially problematic posts, and automatically remove posts from known offenders. It could also be used proactively to inject accurate information into ad space.
The Ministry of National Defense’s Information, Communications and Electronic Force Command could put more emphasis on Internet communications and take the fight to China, spreading information about Beijing’s human rights violations and encouraging dissent. It could enlist the help of AI to search for ways to compromise China’s critical and military infrastructure, which would be strategically crucial in the event of a conflict.
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