The police officers walked past the display of robot dogs and into the ornate Beijing hotel ballroom, as a welcome video showed animated androids conducting warfare in outer space.

警察经过展示机器狗的地方，走进北京某个酒店华丽的宴会厅，欢迎视频中展示着动画机器人在外太空作战的画面。

For the next few hours, the officers, who had come from all across China, sat and listened as tech executives and government researchers took the stage to describe how they could use artificial intelligence to perfect their surveillance of Chinese society.

在接下来的几个小时里，这些来自中国各地的警官坐下来，听科技高管和政府研究人员上台描述如何利用人工智能完善对中国社会的监控。

One executive said his company was partnering with the police in ethnic-minority regions to deploy its speech recognition software, which he said could decipher more than 200 Chinese dialects and minority languages, in the name of national security.

一位高管表示，他的公司正在与少数民族地区的警方合作，以国家安全的名义部署语音识别软件。他说，该软件可以破译200多种中国方言和少数民族语言。

A researcher for the Ministry of Public Security said that robots could reduce the need for police officers to conduct street patrols, by being trained to look out for things like protest banners.

公安部的一名研究人员说，机器人可以通过训练来识别抗议横幅之类的东西，从而减少警察进行街头巡逻的需求。

The chief executive of another company, which describes itself as using big data to make cities safer, suggested its software could help the police understand a person’s habits, connections and even state of mind, based on that person’s medical history, online shopping habits, interactions with neighbors and use of smart home appliances.

另一家自称利用大数据提升城市安全的公司的首席执行官表示，该公司的软件可以帮助警方根据一个人的就医记录、网购习惯、邻里互动以及智能家电的使用数据，了解一个人的生活习性、社交关系甚至精神状态。

It was hard to tell how many of the systems advertised at the conference, which was hosted by an industry group, actually worked, and how many were being hyped up with the aim of winning contracts from the many high-ranking police officials in attendance.

这次会议由一个行业组织主办，很难说在会上宣传的系统中有多少真正有效，又有多少是为了从与会的许多高级警官那里赢得合同而过度宣传。

But it was clear that the companies and the officials shared a common goal: a Chinese state that is ever more capable of knowing, predicting and controlling its citizens.

但很明显，这些公司和官员有一个共同的目标：一个越来越有能力了解、预测和控制其公民的国家政权。

That vision of an all-seeing state has unnerved Washington, which has cited China’s use of advanced computing to enable surveillance and repression as one reason for restricting the export of chips and semiconductors to China.

这种全知全能的国家愿景让华盛顿感到不安，华盛顿把中国利用先进的计算技术进行监视和镇压作为限制向中国出口芯片和半导体的理由之一。

A number of the Chinese companies that attended the conference are on American export control lists, including the tech giants Huawei and Hikvision, a maker of surveillance camera systems. Several presenters acknowledged the challenges that the U.S. restrictions had created for their ambitions, but they pledged to overcome them with homegrown alternatives.

参加会议的许多中国公司都被列入美国的出口管制名单，包括科技巨头华为和监控摄像头系统制造商海康威视。几位发言者承认，美国的限制给他们的雄心造成了阻碍，但他们承诺将用本土的替代方案来克服困难。

华为手机，摄于上海。这家科技巨头还生产供政府使用的监控摄像头系统。

China is not alone in using advances in A.I. to heighten surveillance. The New York Police Department, for example, has drawn criticism from civil rights advocates for its widespread and often undisclosed use of tracking technology.

中国并不是唯一一个利用人工智能技术来加强监控的国家。例如，纽约警察局就因广泛且经常未公开地使用追踪技术而受到民权倡导者的批评。

But the scale and sophistication of China’s surveillance apparatus are unparalleled. The state tracks its 1.4 billion people through a vast network of cameras, internet controls and requirements that people use their national IDs to buy everything from SIM cards to stand-up comedy tickets.

但中国监控体系的规模和复杂程度是无与伦比的。中国政府通过庞大的摄像头网络、互联网控制，以及要求人们使用身份证购买从SIM卡到脱口秀门票等一切商品，对14亿人口实施追踪。

Now the authorities are looking to make it even more powerful, after the central Chinese government recently rolled out the “A.I.+ Action Plan,” a sweeping project to put the technology at the center of education, health care, entertainment — basically, every aspect of Chinese life.

现在，在中央政府最近推出“人工智能+”行动之后，当局正寻求将它进一步强化。这个宏大计划旨在将人工智能技术深度植入教育、医疗、娱乐——几乎涵盖中国人生活的所有领域。

The new political mandate was palpable at the security conference, where several speakers referred to it by name.

这场安全会议上弥漫着新的政治导向，多位发言者明确提及该计划。

“Our country’s security industry has already become one of the most successful sectors in implementing A.I.+,” Gu Jianguo, a former high-ranking official at the Ministry of Public Security, said at the conference. “We don’t need to be modest.”

“我国的安全行业已经成为应用‘人工智能+’最成功的行业之一，”前公安部高级官员顾建国（音）在会议上说。“我们不必谦虚。”

The conference highlighted one key advantage that Chinese companies that work with the police hold over competitors, at home and abroad, in developing cutting-edge A.I. technology: access to huge amounts of data.

会议强调了与警方合作的中国公司在开发尖端人工智能技术方面相比国内外竞争对手拥有的一个关键优势：获得大量数据的渠道。

The companies’ close cooperation with the government gives them an unmatched supply of information that can be used to train and refine artificial intelligence systems. An analysis published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, in the United States, found that Chinese facial recognition companies that won public security-related government contracts later went on to develop more new commercial products afterward, compared with companies that did not work with the police.

公司与政府的密切合作为他们提供了无与伦比的信息资源，这些资源可用于培训和完善人工智能系统。美国国家经济研究局发布的一份分析报告发现，获得公安类政府合同的中国人脸识别企业，后续开发的新商业产品数量显著多于未与警方合作的同行。

中国官方媒体5月发布的一张照片显示，北京警方正与机器人进行巡逻演练。与中国警方合作的人工智能技术开发企业拥有一个重要优势：能够获取海量数据。

Fang Ce, a representative of iFlytek, a leading Chinese speech recognition company, said that police reports were a particularly valuable source of input for the company, because “the data volume is extremely large.” Mr. Fang, the director of iFlytek’s police affairs department, said the company’s software could help police officers log and analyze emergency calls, as well as infer whether someone was talking about a crime in a roundabout way, rather than using specific keywords.

中国领先的语音识别公司科大讯飞的代表方策说，警方的报告对该公司来说是特别有价值的输入来源，因为“数据量非常大”。科大讯飞智慧警务业务部总监方策说，该公司的软件可以帮助警察记录和分析报警电话，并能识别隐晦表述，以推断对方是否在谈论犯罪活动，而不是仅靠特定的关键词。

He also said that iFlytek had developed a large-scale speech model that recognized 74 foreign languages and “for our national security, supports 202 dialects” of Chinese.

他还表示，科大讯飞开发了一个大规模的语音模型，可以识别74种外语，以及“为保障我们的国家安全，它支持202种方言”。

The company has been “collaborating in limited ways with local ethnic minority public security agencies” to protect ethnic languages, he added.

他还说，该公司一直在“与当地少数民族公安机关进行一定的合作”，保护少数民族语言。

Human rights groups have long accused iFlytek of helping the Chinese government use voice patterns for surveillance and repression, especially of minorities in regions like Xinjiang and Tibet. The company has said that it protects users’ privacy and is interested in the preservation of dialects and languages.

人权组织长期指控科大讯飞协助中国政府利用语音特征实施监控与压制，尤其针对新疆、西藏等地区的少数民族。该公司表示，它保护用户的隐私，并致力于方言和民族语言的保护传承。

Indeed, many of the presenters described the use cases for their products as benign: helping to track down missing children, for example, or combat identity fraud. Mr. Fang suggested that iFlytek’s software could be used to monitor police officers, too, for missteps or misconduct.

事实上，许多发言者将产品应用场景描述为善意用途：例如，帮助寻找失踪儿童，或打击身份欺诈。方策表示，科大讯飞的软件也可以用来监控警察的失误或不当行为。

But companies pitched their ability to target certain types of individuals who have long been identified as potential troublemakers, including migrant workers and people who complain to the government.

但是，公司也强调了它们针对特定人群的监控能力——这些长期被视为潜在麻烦制造者的群体包括农民工和上访的民众。

7月，上海一个展会上科大讯飞人工智能模型的展位。人权组织指控科大讯飞协助中国政府利用语音特征压制部分民众。

One presenter from the company Quan Min Ren Zheng — which translates loosely as All-People Authentication, and makes tools to help governments and companies verify people’s identities — described how his company could help the authorities detect suspicious behavior in rental homes. His company makes products like smart door locks that could determine if people who were not authorized to live in a place had entered the premises, and electricity meters that could flag abnormal electricity usage.

一位来自全民认证公司的发言者描述了他的公司如何帮助当局发现出租屋里的可疑行为，该公司主要生产帮助政府和企业验证个人身份的工具。该公司生产的智能门锁能识别未经授权认证的入住者，以及可以标记异常用电量的电表。

Some of the technology is most likely already being used. One state-owned company at the conference, SDIC Intelligence, won a $2 million contract last year to provide a county government in southwestern China with a platform that could analyze people’s “frequented areas, activity patterns and locations,” according to public procurement documents. It won a similar amount to help Dongguan, a city in southern China, build profiles of mobile phone users based on their movements, deliveries and contact book entries.

其中一些技术很可能已经投入使用。据公共采购文件显示，参加会议的国有企业国投智能公司去年赢得了一份价值148万元的合同，为中国西南部的某县政府提供可以分析人们“经常光顾的地区、活动模式和地点”的系统平台。该公司还以相近金额中标中国南方城市东莞的一个项目，它可以根据手机用户的活动轨迹、快递记录和通讯录条目建立手机用户画像。

For all the excitement that advances in A.I. have created in the security industry, though, the technical prowess of the surveillance technology is less important than its sheer pervasiveness, said Alison Sile Chen-Zhao, a researcher studying the effect of A.I. on surveillance at the University of California San Diego. As long as people believe that they are being watched, they will think twice about doing anything the government might disapprove of.

加州大学圣地亚哥分校研究人工智能对监控影响的研究员赵思乐说，尽管人工智能的进步在安防行业引发了巨大的热情，但监控技术的关键在于它的覆盖能力，而不是它的监控能力。只要人们相信自己受到监视，他们就会在做任何可能触犯政府的事情时三思而后行。

“The surveillance actually doesn’t need to achieve a very high accuracy or effectiveness to have the desired effect,” she said.

“监视实际上不需要达到很高的准确性或有效性，就能获得预期效果，”她说。