China’s ‘social Credit’ system fueled by artificial intelligence, and IoT is being enforced, creating a credit score based society. A moral ranking system has been developed by China for years to monitor the behavior of its enormous population – and rank them according to their “social credit.”
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In 2015, a government document announced that the “social credit system” was “an important component of the socialist market economy system and social governance system” and aimed to reinforce the idea that “keeping trust is glorious and breaking trust is disgraceful.”
Social scores may reward or punish citizens in #China
by @mvollmer1#ArtificialIntelligence #innovation #AI
Cc: @MikeQuindazzi pic.twitter.com/GcCT3akwON
— Ronald van Loon (@Ronald_vanLoon) May 10, 2022
The South China Morning Post reports that China’s economic planning team, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the People’s Bank of China, and the Chinese court system determine the rankings.
This artificial intelligence-based system can be used for both individuals and businesses. According to Wired, the private sector, including the burgeoning tech world in China, has its own non-governmental scoring system. According to the think tank Merics, Sesame Credit, owned by Jack Ma’s Ant Group, uses its own unofficial score system for its employees, such as studying their shopping habits.
CNBC reported that millions of Americans had participated in the program in recent years, and that it would be fully operational and integrated by 2020.
Source: YouTube
‘Bad’ citizens are punished, but the system also rewards ‘good’ citizens
A good score can speed up travel applications to Europe, Botsman said. A woman who had a good credit score told the BBC in 2015 that she didn’t have to pay a cash deposit to book a hotel in Beijing. Also, the outlet reported that Baihe, China’s largest dating site now owned by Jiayuan, is boosting the profiles of good citizens.
With good social credit, citizens can also get discounts on energy bills, rent things without a deposit, and get better interest rates at banks. In 2018, Foreign Policy featured a story about the city council of Rongcheng, in Eastern China, which rolled out a social credit system for its citizens.
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The system has been likened to dystopian science fiction
China’s social credit system possesses a moral element, which is one of the reasons many have compared it to some form of dystopian governance, such as in George Orwell’s “1984”, where the state heavily controls every aspect of a citizen’s life.
The system has been dubbed “chilling” by Human Rights Watch and “an out of control futuristic vision of Big Brother,” but some citizens say that it is already making them better people.
The 32-year-old entrepreneur who only gave his name as Chen told Foreign Policy in 2018 that “I feel people’s behavior has improved in the past six months. For example, when we drive, we stop at crosswalks. If you don’t, you will lose your points. At first, we just worried about losing points, but now we got used to it.”.
