Here is a doco that covers both why Shenzhen is becoming the hardware and software centre of the world, and the dystopian elements that entails:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taZJblMAuko&t=1s

Minnesänger wrote:

Basically, for those not in the know, if I jaywalked in Shenzhen the local government could, and does, automatically fine me via my ID-linked ewallet and social network accounts. No letters, no juries, just crime and fine. Within 20 seconds.

That's grim.

Comprehensive isn't the word I'd use.

I mean, from a personal perspective I can be 100% sure that I'm on a constant watch list. The wife's parents are CCP officials and I'm a foreign national. I know what the deal is.

Indeed.

Dystopian indeed.
The people, history, culture and language are fascinating though.

djchump wrote:

There must be false positives all over the place. I’ve seen 96% and 80% false positive failure rates quoted for the London tests.

It always starts off like that. If you've got a big enough dataset it'll learn really well really quick. Getting labelled data is the tricky part because you're going to need things like social networks to get that for you, which seemingly isn't a problem in China. 

FB et al certainly has the databases to make it very accurate indeed. We can but hope they're not supplying government agences with labelled data, but I suspect they might be. Once you 'acquire' a database you can train a neural network on it and delete the data. Now you've got a lovely new toy and no digital fingerprints to worry about.

SpaceGazelle wrote:

 Getting labelled data is the tricky part because you're going to need things like social networks to get that for you, which seemingly isn't a problem in China. 

Yup, that's the hump that neural networks have to overcome.

It's not an issue here though - social networks and e-wallets are tied to national IDs, all of which require facial data and biometrics. If the government has access to social network data, which they do, they have a huge database of pre-tagged pics to throw into their AI to learn.

A quick Google and I notice they're using neurals it for lie detecting now. Jesus. They can get good results using facial micro expressions alone. For one of my Masters projects I decided to see I could train a CNN on a really small database but using HD photos - of celebs and a few people on the course. It worked alarmingly well. Seems it was picking up skin patterns like moles and veins and you could show it portions of faces like the top or botton and it did ok. And that's just me doing it over a couple of weeks as a noob.

Can you protest auto-fines in China?  Or is it just like "tough shit" if the robots get it wrong?

acemuzzy wrote:

Can you protest auto-fines in China?  Or is it just like "tough shit" if the robots get it wrong?

It wouldn't surprise if they at least allowed you to protest, at least for now. More labelled data innit?

AI tanks that don't miss.

I spoke recently with a chap who is also in China and on very serious watch lists with his ‘eyes wide open’, as you say. 

Despite living between Scotland and Shanghai, he’s an American citizen and he has a code word arrangement with the US embassy – text, phone, email or whatever to the embassy with his code word included and there is a prearranged plan to get him safely out of China within 12 hours. All to avoid the very real prospect of being suddenly ‘disappeared’ by the party.

One related thing that I probably should have mentioned re. the auto-fine system, is that it is just one part of the newer Citizen Rating system that is coming into play, and Shenzhen is kind of at the forefront of that. 

Basically, imagine every citizen had an invisible ASBO rating. Performing anti-social acts, even if not crimes themselves, would see your rating change, and this would influence your ability to gain access to certain services. These acts can be small (Poprock or Sparky recently posted about "Beijing Bikinis", and that would be a good example of a small, anti-social act that the government wants to change), ranging from being shirtless, to playing loud music on a public bus, to taking off your shoes and resting your feet on chairs in public, to small crimes (jaywalking) and so on - up to and beyond, the opinions you express online and whether they are detrimental to the stability of the country or critical of the party.

As your rating changes, you may find it harder, or impossible, to buy long-distance train tickets, or get a mortgage for a house. The idea is to tie all IDs, public actions and social media into one pool of information and try to "civilise" people (incidentally, the word civilise is kind of a common one that is used here, but the like-for-like translation makes it sounds worse than it is).

In recent years, the government has clamped down on spitting, low food safety, fireworks in cities and the like - all things I would have though impossible in the beginning. And this social rating project is an extension of that. 

I didn't twig it at first, but Shenzhen is the politest city I have ever been to in China. I was genuinely surprised that when I went there, cars stopped to let people cross the road, and that passengers on public transport regularly gave their seats to the elderly or pregnant women. I don't know if that is just the Shenzhen culture - it may be, as the city is incredibly international - or if it is because of the influence of social engineering. 

Anyway, I don't know where I'm going with this, it was just something I forgot to mention the first time round.

Weirdly enough, Black Mirror is super popular in China. Go figure.