The Public AI Research Portfolio of China’s Security Forces

Abstract

New analytic tools are used in this data brief to explore the public artificial intelligence (AI) research portfolio of China’s security forces. The methods contextualize Chinese-language scholarly papers that claim a direct working affiliation with components of the Ministry of Public Security, People's Armed Police Force, and People’s Liberation Army. The authors review potential uses of computer vision, robotics, natural language processing and general AI research.

Harnessed Lightning: How the Chinese Military is Adopting Artificial Intelligence

“…Most public AI research papers sponsored by the PLAAF are related to autonomous flight, a trend that extends to its procurement records. 246 Several contracts were related to intelligent flight decision control (智能驾驶决策控制), technology primarily developed by Northwestern Polytechnical University and research institutes subordinate to CASC. One of the primary companies involved in supplying autonomous UAVs to the PLAAF is ChunYi UAV (北京淳一航空科技 有限公司), a Beijing-based provider of autonomous aerial and surface-sea vehicles.…”