https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/magazine\/archive\/2020\/09\/china-ai-surveillance\/614197\/<\/a>)\u00a0as part of a Government seminar paper I\u2019m writing on the fusion of AI and authoritarianism, and I couldn\u2019t help but remark at Orwellian-ness of this vision that Xi\u2019s pursuing. \u00a0Consider this passage:\u00a0\u201c[Xi] wants to build an all-seeing digital system of social control, patrolled by precog algorithms that identify potential dissenters in real time.\u201d To Orwell, the idea that smart cameras could constantly monitor even slight displays of dissent was mostly a convenient allegory for Stalinist surveillance regimes. Yet with\u00a0\u201chundreds of millions of surveillance cameras in place\u201d already and facial recognition AI that claims to\u00a0identify emotions, the future seems to be here\u00a0already. There\u2019s also pervasive surveillance of the internet, financial transactions, and even\u00a0\u201cSpy Bird\u201d drones that look like doves swooping\u00a0over cities! China hasn\u2019t fully\u00a0integrated all of these data streams yet, but there seem to be no major boundaries in their way to doing so, as China\u2019s fusion of a productive tech sector and legal disregard for personal privacy make it a fertile ground for these kind of developments (particularly in Xinjiang as part of the genocide against the\u00a0Uighur people). Is the the future of autocracy? Can it be countered? Perhaps we should all re-read 1984 or rewatch Black Mirror for some guidance.<\/p>\nP.S. I love the original gifs and artwork by\u00a0Jonathan Djob Nkondo that accompanies this piece in the Atlantic. I attached one above, but I recommend that everyone checks all of them out!<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There is a rich history of science fictional\u00a0novums crossing into the real world, though we\u2019re still waiting on time travel. I read this article in the Atlantic (https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/magazine\/archive\/2020\/09\/china-ai-surveillance\/614197\/)\u00a0as part of a Government seminar paper I\u2019m writing on the fusion of AI and authoritarianism, and I couldn\u2019t help but remark at Orwellian-ness of this vision that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1245,"featured_media":3523,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wsf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/world-science-fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/world-science-fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/world-science-fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/world-science-fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1245"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/world-science-fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/world-science-fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3522\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/world-science-fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/world-science-fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/world-science-fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/world-science-fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}