With over 400 million cameras being placed across China, everyone is continuously being recorded, their every move recorded as if within a “digital big brother.”The social credit system works through AI technology and is designed to “value and engineer better individual behaviour by establishing the scores of citizens and awarding the trustworthy and punishing the disobedient”. The technology monitors behaviours of people, judging them as either good or bad which links to a score against your name. The ‘good’ citizens get benefits such as half price fares on public transport, cheap loans, a fast track to the best universities etc and the ‘bad’ behaving citizens will be punished by being denied access to public transport, government jobs, getting credit etc.
A trial of this system is being done in multiple cities already across China, and many companies are helping the government to get the technology ready for the nationalised system. When this is up and running it will be the world’s first digital dictatorship. Although there are benefits to this system like being able to track down dangerous individuals in a matter of seconds or improving technology, the system in the wrong hands could be dangerous. This system seems to take away any privacy rights people once had. When this system implemented in China, it won’t be long before it is introduced overseas and soon we will be the ones losing our rights to privacy.
Ashley's Blog 