AI could turn China’s social credit system into surveillance tool: government-funded study

AI Summary

A Chinese legal scholar warns that applying AI to the country’s social credit system could transform it into a large-scale surveillance tool. The warning appears in a government-funded study published in the Journal of Sichuan, while the system is described as having limited practical influence for many people in China.

China’s social credit system, stereotypically imagined as an all-powerful numerical scoring project for authoritarian control, has gained notoriety in the West – although people inside the country actually feel little of its presence or practical influence. In a government-funded study, however, a Chinese legal scholar warned that deploying artificial intelligence (AI) risked turning the rating system into a “large-scale surveillance tool”. The paper was published in the Journal of Sichuan...