A Surveillance State With Chinese Characteristics

The Wall Street Journal has an excellent article out today about how China is boldly utilizing AI to track and change its citizens’ behavior:

China is rushing to deploy new technologies to monitor its people in ways that would spook many in the U.S. and the West. Unfettered by privacy concerns or public debate, Beijing’s authoritarian leaders are installing iris scanners at security checkpoints in troubled regions and using sophisticated software to monitor ramblings on social media. By 2020, the government hopes to implement a national “social credit” system that would assign every citizen a rating based on how they behave at work, in public venues and in their financial dealings.

China’s technology companies are helping lead the way, scooping up unprecedented data on people’s lives through their mobile phones and competing to develop and market surveillance systems for government use.

It’s not just online behavior. Facial-recognition technology is being used to shame and deter jaywalkers, and even to monitor (and deter) the religious:

The growing appeal of religion in China has unsettled the country’s officially atheist leadership. Three years ago, authorities began removing crosses from many places of worship in Wenzhou, and last year China’s State Administration of Religious Affairs ordered major churches, mosques and temples to be “fully covered” by surveillance cameras. Cameras were installed at the Wenzhou church holding the meeting and at others, including some trained on pews.

In an interview before the meeting, the pastor said local authorities told him the video feed went to police headquarters. “I assume the cameras have facial recognition. Why wouldn’t they?” he said. “I have Communist Party members and prominent business owners in my congregation. If they think their faces are being scanned when they walk through the door on Sunday, of course they’re going to stop coming.”

Police authorities in Wenzhou declined to comment on church surveillance.

And this is just the beginning. As China continues to pour massive amounts of money into artificial intelligence research, it will surely develop even more intrusive ways to follow, monitor, and coerce its citizens.

Techno-utopians have long argued that emerging technologies inevitably tilt the playing field toward democracy by opening up repressive societies and driving demands for transparency. Unfortunately, that is almost certainly a gross oversimplification of the process, and probably a terrible misreading of how things will play out. Information is the basis of power in our century, and states are going to have much more power than ever before.

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