Saw a report last night about this.  China is using AI systems with vehicle, facial and other types of identification algorithms to tag every person, bus, car, bike, etc.  They then collect video information on each entity as they move about regarding jaywalking, running traffic lights, speeding, bikes on sidewalks, and so on.  Each person is "scored" for how good or bad a person they are.

If your score is too low, you can be forbidden from buying an airline ticket, getting a travel visa, sending your kid to private school, getting a mortgage, .... pretty much anything that can be used as punishment for being a less than acceptable citizen in an idealistic orderly society.  As an added bonus, law breakers like jaywalkers have their "crimes" broadcast on public video displays to publicly embarrass them for being a bad citizen.

There's no effective difference between self control to avoid negative consequences versus forced behavioral control.  It's all negative reinforcement.

It's in the same realm as Political Correctness.  Political correctness is thought control.  By conditioning you to not express your thoughts out of fear of offending someone, you are conditioned over time to stop having such thoughts.  This AI system uses the same concept.

China's Surveillance State Should Scare Everyone
The country is perfecting a vast network of digital espionage as a means of social control—
with implications for democracies worldwide.[/size]

Imagine a society in which you are rated by the government on your trustworthiness. Your “citizen score” follows
you wherever you go. A high score allows you access to faster internet service or a fast-tracked visa to Europe.
If you make political posts online without a permit, or question or contradict the government’s official narrative on
current events, however, your score decreases. To calculate the score, private companies working with your
government constantly trawl through vast amounts of your social media and online shopping data.

When you step outside your door, your actions in the physical world are also swept into the dragnet: The
government gathers an enormous collection of information through the video cameras placed on your street and
all over your city. If you commit a crime—or simply jaywalk—facial recognition algorithms will match video footage
of your face to your photo in a national ID database. It won’t be long before the police show up at your door.

This society may seem dystopian, but it isn’t farfetched: It may be China in a few years. The country is racing
to become the first to implement a pervasive system of algorithmic surveillance. Harnessing advances in artificial
intelligence and data mining and storage to construct detailed profiles on all citizens, China’s communist party-
state is developing a “citizen score” to incentivize “good” behavior. A vast accompanying network of surveillance
cameras will constantly monitor citizens’ movements, purportedly to reduce crime and terrorism. While the expanding
Orwellian eye may improve “public safety,” it poses a chilling new threat to civil liberties in a country that already
has one of the most oppressive and controlling governments in the world.

China’s evolving algorithmic surveillance system will rely on the security organs of the communist party-state to filter,
collect, and analyze staggering volumes of data flowing across the internet. Justifying controls in the name of national
security and social stability, China originally planned to develop what it called a “Golden Shield” surveillance system
allowing easy access to local, national, and regional records on each citizen. This ambitious project has so far been
mostly confined to a content-filtering Great Firewall, which prohibits foreign internet sites including Google, Facebook,
and The New York Times. According to Freedom House, China’s level of internet freedom is already the worst on
the planet. Now, the Communist Party of China is finally building the extensive, multilevel data-gathering system it
has dreamed of for decades.

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/02/china-surveillance/552203/

Here's the video report I saw. 

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/chinas-social-credit-system-keeps-a-critical-eye-on-everyday-behavior-even-jaywalking-2018-04-24/

Kind of like Avengers:Winter Soldier.

Wow...  Big Brother is watching.

Kind of like Avengers:Winter Soldier.

Reminds me of the TV show, "Person of Interest".  Different purposes, but eerily similar.  How long before the China AI system is adapted to other purposes, like identifying potential terrorists, crime perpetrators and crime victims?

"The Machine"

It's in the same realm as Political Correctness.  Political correctness is thought control.  By conditioning you to not express your thoughts out of fear of offending someone, you are conditioned over time to stop having such thoughts.  This AI system uses the same concept.

In that line of thought, it has occurred to me that "sensitivity/diversity/etc." classes and seminars forced on employees are no more than business run political re-education camps.  You have no choice in attending the "camp" if you want to keep your job.

I've been to Hong Kong. My impression (and various reading) is that the citizens expect this from their government. For example, couples can only marry one day per month at the government office. On one of the days we were there, the city was covered in couples that were just married and getting their pictures taken.  It was a strange sense of spurious control by the government.

May 4th on Netflix.....  May the Fourth be with you.   

ANON

In a future where technology has rendered privacy obsolete,
a detective investigates a serial assassin who has been deleted
from all visual records.