The latest dystopian nightmare AI just came out — and it raises a lot of questions that are absolutely NOT answered by the social media announcement.
As the times of London reportsChina’s Hefei Comprehensive National Science Center last week announced the development of an “artificial intelligence that enables party formation” in a post on Weibo, the country’s second-largest social media platform.
Ahead of the Chinese Communist Party’s July 1 anniversary, the Heifei Center said in the text of the since-deleted post, which was transcribed and translated by Radio Free Asiathat the new program would remove the “problem” of “guaranteeing the quality of party members’ activities”.
Translation: This artificial intelligence, while many details remain vague, can allegedly determine the loyalty of party members.
“This equipment is a kind of smart ideology, using AI technology to extract and integrate facial expressions, EEG readings and skin conductance,” RFAThe translation of the original Weibo post reads: “making it possible to establish the levels of concentration, recognition and mastery of ideological and political education in order to better understand its effectiveness.”
According to the Time, the equipment was tested by reading brain waves and analyzing facial scans while subjects read articles about the CCP, which then translated into a loyalty score. And yes, that sounds rather vague.
If this story is ringing alarm bells, it’s for good reason — the concept of a mind-reading political AI device testing one’s allegiance to party and country sounds more like “1984” than 2022.
Of course, China does not have a monopoly on ominous AI.
Of the many problems with police use of facial recognition software towards a new algorithm that can allegedly ‘predict’ future crimes developed by the University of Chicago to the often discriminatory AIs Used to determine whether or not someone is eligible for a loan, AI is already sneaking into many people’s lives in invasive and totalitarian ways.
And yes, the development of an AI that uses biometrics to supposedly assess how loyal someone is to a party or nation does indeed seem like a great tool for political repression – and there’s no reason to believe, despite our The Defense Department’s pledge not to use AI unethicallythat if and when the Chinese perfect this technology, we Americans will not buy it for ourselves and our allies.
READ MORE: Chinese AI ‘can control party members’ loyalty’ [The Times of London]
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