| Abstract: |
Authoritarian governments monitoring citizens and manipulating public opinion
is a major source of human rights violations and a critical threat to
democracies worldwide. Past policy responses have faced insurmountable
challenges, as domestic policies of authoritarian countries are difficult to
influence. Regulation of the academic community is an under-recognized step
toward addressing this issue. Authoritarian governments ultimately rely on
their own scientists to develop various technologies for political oppression.
However, scientists themselves have dual identities, being subject to
authoritarian governments and being part of the international academic
community, with values that are often more aligned with those of the
international academic community. They primarily serve their governments for
career advancement purposes. If the international academic community can
provide alternative incentives, we may be able to attract academic
professionals to the side of protecting human rights and weakening the
political control of authoritarian countries. This report, through case
studies and quantitative analysis of all papers published in Chinese on
“public opinion, ” finds that as many as one quarter of the studies help the
Chinese government more strictly monitor and manipulate public opinion, likely
driven by the motive of career advancement. A review of the codes of conduct
of major academic organizations, such as The American Association for the
Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics
Engineers (IEEE), reveals no mention of surveillance and manipulation of
public opinion, except in Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems
(NeurIPS) guidelines, indicating significant regulatory gaps. This neglect
stands in stark contrast to voluminous writing and agreements on ethical
issues along other research frontiers, such as biomedicine or even other areas
of artificial intelligence. The report proposes three policy recommendations
for international academic organizations: 1. Incorporate Surveillance and
Public Opinion Manipulation Issues into Existing Code of Ethics and
Publication Review Process. 2. Establish and promote competitive incentive
policies for elite scientists from authoritarian countries to encourage their
engagement in research that promotes freedom of expression in public opinion.
3. Encourage international academic institutions to collaborate with
international organizations, human rights groups, and media outlets to raise
awareness about the issue of digital surveillance, public opinion research,
and their impact on privacy and human rights. The report emphasizes the
importance of adopting a “Regulatory Collaboration” principle, which is to
say, a comprehensive and balanced approach to addressing the challenges
associated with international research collaborations, as opposed to an
“Exclusionary Stance, ” or the exclusion of scientists from authoritarian
countries from participating in international academic exchange activities. By
adhering to this principle, we can avoid excessive influence of xenophobic
political forces and agendas on academia (such as the Trump-era China
Initiative, which reduced research productivity), and maintain the principles
of academic freedom, anti-discrimination, and free international academic
exchange and cooperation to effectively and sustainably protect the academic
community and enable global scientific research to better serve human welfare. |