10 ms·

Is China’s corruption-busting AI being turned off for being too efficient?

202 points by rakkhi 8y ago

known 8y ago
"Everyone has committed a crime, it's about who we decide to prosecute" --KGB https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704471504574438900830760842 https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704471504574438...
tejaswiy 8y ago
> Beijing has been developing a nationwide facial recognition system using surveillance cameras capable of identifying any person, anywhere, around the clock within seconds. So before all the privacy activists are up in arms, this is pretty incredible and it looks like they're getting pretty close to eliminating all violent crime. I think that's an incredible achievement if they can pull it off. In an even broader historical context, individualism and capitalism have had their run for 100+ years, maybe this is the rise of a new ideological movement.
- georgyo 8y ago
  "There is no murder in paradise."
- Waterluvian 8y ago
  One good reason for having many countries is we can run lots of different experiments on how to govern. Totally ignoring all the humans rights fears, this sure is fascinating.
  - randall 8y ago
    I mean that's the thing, China is going to implement it, we get to see what happens, and I don't think there's much we can do to stop it. I'm interested in seeing how historians look at this period of human history since it will theoretically be so objectively (? maybe? At least plentifully.) documented.
    - yters 8y ago
      If there is one thing the Chinese government is known for, it is objectively documenting everything it does and making such records available to all.
      - chrischen 8y ago
        Either it's documented and the opposition can make educated criticisms, or it's not documented and the oppositions is politically motivated. You can't have both.
      - selimthegrim 8y ago
        Uh, by records do you mean terra cotta soldiers?
- Myrth 8y ago
  Watch "Person of Interest" show
- yters 8y ago
  Since nothing a government does is a crime, by definition, then by consolidating all crimes, violent and otherwise, to the government then we have eliminated all evil! Brilliant!
- lettergram 8y ago
  > eliminating all violent crime You mean, if it’s real and even if it does work that well, besides the state sponsored kind? China has millions of people in internment and retraining camps... Regarding your “new ideological movement” comment. It’s not really... we saw the same ideology (to a less effective level) in all dictatorships and communist countries. Secret police, thought police, etc.
  - chrischen 8y ago
    We have millions of black people incarcerated, the result of systematic discrimination over generations. I'd also like to point out your statement doesn't really add to the conversation as any people in prison, or considered an enemy of the state can be spun politically.
    - lettergram 8y ago
      My point is criminal behavior is defined by the ruling class. So this pervasive 24/7 monitoring doesn’t necessarily reduce the overall harm to a society - in fact it may make it worse. Also: > We have millions of black people incarcerated, the result of systematic discrimination over generations. Not even close to the extent China is persecuting - today. I won’t speak for generations past, clearly not ideal. But I think that’s kind of the point, we agree it’s not ideal.
      - Fricken 8y ago
        >Not even Close to the extent China is persecuting today You might want to look that up. America has the highest incarceration rate in the world, even after you factor in the worst estimates for the Uyghur reeducation camps.
        lettergram 8y ago
        Incarcerations are not persecutions. Arguably a negligible number of percecutions occur in the U.S., as most of the incarcerations are due to violent crimes. Most of the Uyghur re-education camps (which is just one of many examples known and unknown) are not due to violent crimes, but ethnic or political backgrounds (I.e. persecutions)
- thaumasiotes 8y ago
  > So before all the privacy activists are up in arms, this is pretty incredible and it looks like they're getting pretty close to eliminating all violent crime. To be fair, Chinese people anywhere in the world have exceptionally low rates of committing violent crime, and this has been true since long before anyone started a facial recognition program.
- ardy42 8y ago
  > So before all the privacy activists are up in arms, this is pretty incredible and it looks like they're getting pretty close to eliminating all violent crime. Even if it's successful, it will only be used to eliminate the crimes committed by people without connections. Powerful and connected people will be allowed to get away with crimes.
- PlasticTank 8y ago
  > getting pretty close to eliminating all violent crime Clearly you haven't been on YouTube lately, China must be the world capital of getting stabbed on CCTV.
- kbenson 8y ago
  There are many theoretical ways to eliminate violent crime that would be to most people's eyes vastly worse than letting crime continue, so it's dangerous to elevate one metric above all others. Here are some theoretical ways to eliminate all crime which would likely be worse for everyone: - Eliminate all people - Keep all people physically separated from each other. - Remove all freedom of expression or free will from people. Those are, obviously, some of the most extreme possible ways to accomplish that goal, but it does illustrate that there's an obvious trade off being made, and that even in cases where it might not be as obvious as these, we should identify and think about the consequences of that trade.
- jjcc 8y ago
  Violent crime rate is very low because of another reason: Security cameras everywhere. Criminals are either already in jail because of more efficient policing, or stop doing stupid things after watching the real stories on TV about how criminals were caught.
Renaud 8y ago
“AI may quickly point out a corrupt official, but it is not very good at explaining the process it has gone through to reach such a conclusion,” the researcher said. “Although it gets it right in most cases, you need a human to work closely with it.” And that's the crux of the issue with AI being used in any law enforcement situation. If we allow decisions and conclusions being drawn by the AI without a clear explanation of how it got there, we're just creating a monster that will advise -maybe replace- the judgment of law enforcement professionals who won't have the means to question these decisions. Catching corrupt officials is a laudable goal anywhere and I'd like to see it applied to highlight potential irregularities that may require a second look but the danger here is that an unprovable AI be used to make claims or start being used as sufficient evidence to ruin people's lives.
- newsbinator 8y ago
  I wonder if it gets it right in most cases because officials are corrupt in most cases. It's like building an AI that guesses when it's going to be a rainy day in Seattle.
  - WalterBright 8y ago
    My Seattle rain-forecasting algorithm is very good. It forecasts rain tomorrow if it is raining today, and not-rain if it is not raining today.
  - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
    >I wonder if it gets it right in most cases because officials are corrupt in most cases. This with a large helping of "the laws were intentionally written to be broad" on the side. With a suitably inclusive definition of "corrupt" every official is corrupt.
- jlarocco 8y ago
  > If we allow decisions and conclusions being drawn by the AI without a clear explanation of how it got there The funny thing is expert systems were doing that 30 years ago. Seems like this would be a perfect use of them but it's not a buzzword any more. It's crazy how many wheels get poorly reinvented in the software world.
ldp01 8y ago
This reminds me of a detail from the plot of the original Deus Ex. Part way through the game, there is an optional dialogue with a benevolent AI. If you question it enough, it reveals that it is the rejected prototype for an anti-corruption/terrorism AI which was turned off for being too effective: eventually classifying its own masters as a criminal organisation.
- rurounijones 8y ago
  I have played that game many many times and never came across this conversation. Time to play again I guess.
  - ldp01 8y ago
    I think I got the conversation wrong... But it's definitely revealed at some point. My memory has gotten fuzzy! Definitely time to give it another play through.
- NikolaNovak 8y ago
  Hmm, wow... I played original Deus Ex a few times and do not recall it. Is it part of the recently released "Revision" uplift? :-\
  - throwaway2048 8y ago
    Deus Ex had multiple storylines and endings, depending on your actions.
  - Barrin92 8y ago
    man this thread makes me want to replay the game again. It's in the original game and it was the MJ12 Daedalus AI, although I'm not quite sure where the player picks that piece of backstory up. It might be in the dialogue with the prototype in the Everett house.
    - ldp01 8y ago
      Yeah it's Daedalus. I Googled it and I'm factually correct but I must have the conversations mixed up in my head... It might be one of the human characters who tells the player about it. Definitely time to give it another play through.
taneq 8y ago
So it's fine to use systems like this on the populace but when used on the government, they make people 'uncomfortable'?
- spangry 8y ago
  As O'Brien passed the telescreen a thought seemed to strike him. He stopped, turned aside and pressed a switch on the wall. There was a sharp snap. The voice had stopped. Julia uttered a tiny sound, a sort of squeak of surprise. Even in the midst of his panic, Winston was too much taken aback to be able to hold his tongue. 'You can turn it off!' he said. 'Yes,' said O'Brien, 'we can turn it off. We have that privilege.'
  - lostlogin 8y ago
    Just finished a few of his and it was well worth it. I’m left with the impression that he seemed to do things just to see what they were like. His descriptions of hunting critters in his squalid Paris bed sit and of going over the top in trench warfare are memorable.
- iliketosleep 8y ago
  This is exactly what I was thinking, and it's a little scary. The officials are smart enough to know why this kind of system is dangerous and refuse to be subject to it, yet they'll forge full steam ahead whilst applying it to the general populace. I hope they recognize the danger of this.
  - smolder 8y ago
    This attitude is not unique to government officials. People are incentivized to care more about themselves and those close to them than the whole entirety of humanity. Malignant self interest is mainstream, cooperation is taboo.
- anonthos3261 8y ago
  Reminds me of how most of Congress is against Single Payer, yet they are all comfy with their great health insurance.
throwaway010718 8y ago
"it is not very good at explaining the process it has gone through to reach such a conclusion". The above statement is just too convenient and practically superstitious. AI is data hungry. That implies that there are so many past incidences of corruption you can generate large training data sets. So perhaps even a random guess would be too efficient since it is right more often than not.
- nerdponx 8y ago
  "it is not very good at explaining the process it has gone through to reach such a conclusion". To be fair, generating human-understandable explanations of predictions in a complicated nonlinear model is difficult in general. You typically need to come up with some kind of simplification of the model (like LIME [0]), and it's far from perfect or generally-applicable. [0]: https://homes.cs.washington.edu/~marcotcr/blog/lime/ https://homes.cs.washington.edu/~marcotcr/blog/lime/
  - soraki_soladead 8y ago
    SHAP is more recent and does work with (just about) any ML model: https://github.com/slundberg/shap https://github.com/slundberg/shap There's still more work to do in interpretability but models are rarely opaque black boxes with no way to see inside.
- logicchains 8y ago
  def is_corrupt(data): return rand(0.0, 1.0) < 0.9
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
_-___________-_ 8y ago
I would say that it's far more likely that the system simply never worked properly. The amount of non-functional so-called "AI" features you find in China is astounding. A friend's apartment building got the latest facial-recognition door lock - which will open the door if you hold up his Facebook photo on your phone. Just the other day, my wife found out by accident that her friend's Huawei phone will unlock for her using its version of Face ID. They have similar facial structure but really look nothing alike. China is amazingly good at many things, but _genuine_ technological innovation is not something I've seen in my time here. No doubt this corruption-busting "AI" was developed by companies and people with deep connections to the relevant Party members, but little of the necessary experience or resources to actually carry out the project successfully. When it became clear that it didn't work and would never work, this story was a way to allow the responsible people to save face.
- anonthos3261 8y ago
  I think this is the case for most countries. Can you give an example of _genuine_ technological innovation that was done outside the US?
- pishpash 8y ago
  These days, AI means an inefficient chatbot standing in for the function of a simple webform. It's not even about working or not working.
- rahimnathwani 8y ago
  "the latest facial-recognition door lock - which will open the door if you hold up his Facebook photo on your phone" Meanwhile, Baidu's main campus has had facial recognition on entry gates for years (and the gates cannot be fooled by 2D photos). And Face++ (a Chinese company) provides SDKs to allow you to detect liveness (i.e. not a photo) via their APIs. This is used by many apps when a user registers for the first time. "her friend's Huawei phone will unlock for her using its version of Face ID" There was a well-reported story about someone who got a refund on their iPhone for the same reason. How is this a Chinese phenomenon? "but _genuine_ technological innovation is not something I've seen" How do you define this? There was a white paper linked here recently about how WeChat scales its backend systems to cope with load. Are none of those scaling techniques innovative? (And probably similar for taobao.)
wufufufu 8y ago
I could do the same thing with a heuristic. Just enumerate every government official with a high net worth and investigate them.
ac130kz 8y ago
Here in Kazakhstan a couple of wise guys suggested to use a blockchain to fight crimes within the police itself, and these plans quickly ditched after they realised the blockchain's pure brutality.
- raihansaputra 8y ago
  Will blockchain be a force as impactful as writing itself? I remember a short story (possibly fictitious) involving Native American tribes and a missionary who introduced writing. The permanence of record changed the way they live and the debate of standings between the tribes. What was once a negotiation tactic (by "remembering" that their ancestors fought together/who married who) becomes merely a bookkeeping routine. A lesson was sometimes, what matters is not what happened in the past. What will change when useful, ubiquitous, and user-friendly blockchain applications are plenty?
  - Pete_D 8y ago
    FWIW, that sounds like The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling by Ted Chiang. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truth_of_Fact%2C_the_Truth_of_Feeling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truth_of_Fact%2C_the_Truth...
    - raihansaputra 8y ago
      Yes! The details were really fuzzy to me. Thank you for finding this story!
sonnyblarney 8y ago
The 'problem' with widespread corruption is not identifying it, it's always been an issue of the political will to do something about it. When it's rampant, it's easy to find. So this has nothing to do with AI or even technology. Granted, tech might make it easier to find some bad guys, even then, the fact that stuff is 'online' and in a 'searchable DB' makes this possible, the AI is not necessary.
Proven 8y ago
Corruption (financial and other) is a foundation of unfree societies. In a free society with only private property, how can there be corruption when there is no favor you can hand out without stealing something from an actual person who will come after you?
ngcc_hk 8y ago
High level issue ================ Given how corruption is being used and how low pay the top guy is, i think the AI need HI very much. Put it the other way everyone must be corrupted somehow otherwise how can a us$100k top communist sent her daughter to harvard to study psychology. And the other guy who died of corruption charge run a fast railway wort trillion dollars for petty salary. They have to reform the compensation package ... communist have a hard time here. Hence has to lie ... and if a system can spot liar ... Muslum jailing issue ==================== I heard this black ... but both should not be done and given there is not even fake news independence and judicial system, stange to compare
jacquesm 8y ago
Europe has a similar system in place. https://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=325&intPageId=3587&langId=en https://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=325&intPageId=358...
rafiki6 8y ago
This sounds like a really typical implementation of an AML system. My guess is they actually shut it off because it generated too many false positives. In authoritarian countries, corruption charges are generally trumped up when an official becomes inconvenient for those in power. This means that there are a lot of things officials do that are tolerated and will be used against them once they need to be removed. Therefore the definition of corruption is loose as it's kind of an accepted operating model. If you implement a system like this, suddenly all that acceptable behavior generates lots of positives because your feature selection and classification is based on a threshold no one meets.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
onetimemanytime 8y ago
"AI" might be as simple as running a calculation on his expenses, real estate holdings, $$ deposited, wired out, salary etc. Maybe run for his close family, driver's family too.
LorenPechtel 8y ago
Are officials objecting to it because they know it will expose their dirty deeds?

202 points by rakkhi 8y ago

"Everyone has committed a crime, it's about who we decide to prosecute" --KGB https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704471504574438900830760842 https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704471504574438...

tejaswiy 8y ago

> Beijing has been developing a nationwide facial recognition system using surveillance cameras capable of identifying any person, anywhere, around the clock within seconds. So before all the privacy activists are up in arms, this is pretty incredible and it looks like they're getting pretty close to eliminating all violent crime. I think that's an incredible achievement if they can pull it off. In an even broader historical context, individualism and capitalism have had their run for 100+ years, maybe this is the rise of a new ideological movement.

georgyo 8y ago
"There is no murder in paradise."
Waterluvian 8y ago
One good reason for having many countries is we can run lots of different experiments on how to govern. Totally ignoring all the humans rights fears, this sure is fascinating.
- randall 8y ago
  I mean that's the thing, China is going to implement it, we get to see what happens, and I don't think there's much we can do to stop it. I'm interested in seeing how historians look at this period of human history since it will theoretically be so objectively (? maybe? At least plentifully.) documented.
  - yters 8y ago
    If there is one thing the Chinese government is known for, it is objectively documenting everything it does and making such records available to all.
    - chrischen 8y ago
      Either it's documented and the opposition can make educated criticisms, or it's not documented and the oppositions is politically motivated. You can't have both.
    - selimthegrim 8y ago
      Uh, by records do you mean terra cotta soldiers?
Myrth 8y ago
Watch "Person of Interest" show
yters 8y ago
Since nothing a government does is a crime, by definition, then by consolidating all crimes, violent and otherwise, to the government then we have eliminated all evil! Brilliant!
lettergram 8y ago
> eliminating all violent crime You mean, if it’s real and even if it does work that well, besides the state sponsored kind? China has millions of people in internment and retraining camps... Regarding your “new ideological movement” comment. It’s not really... we saw the same ideology (to a less effective level) in all dictatorships and communist countries. Secret police, thought police, etc.
- chrischen 8y ago
  We have millions of black people incarcerated, the result of systematic discrimination over generations. I'd also like to point out your statement doesn't really add to the conversation as any people in prison, or considered an enemy of the state can be spun politically.
  - lettergram 8y ago
    My point is criminal behavior is defined by the ruling class. So this pervasive 24/7 monitoring doesn’t necessarily reduce the overall harm to a society - in fact it may make it worse. Also: > We have millions of black people incarcerated, the result of systematic discrimination over generations. Not even close to the extent China is persecuting - today. I won’t speak for generations past, clearly not ideal. But I think that’s kind of the point, we agree it’s not ideal.
    - Fricken 8y ago
      >Not even Close to the extent China is persecuting today You might want to look that up. America has the highest incarceration rate in the world, even after you factor in the worst estimates for the Uyghur reeducation camps.
      - lettergram 8y ago
        Incarcerations are not persecutions. Arguably a negligible number of percecutions occur in the U.S., as most of the incarcerations are due to violent crimes. Most of the Uyghur re-education camps (which is just one of many examples known and unknown) are not due to violent crimes, but ethnic or political backgrounds (I.e. persecutions)
thaumasiotes 8y ago
> So before all the privacy activists are up in arms, this is pretty incredible and it looks like they're getting pretty close to eliminating all violent crime. To be fair, Chinese people anywhere in the world have exceptionally low rates of committing violent crime, and this has been true since long before anyone started a facial recognition program.
ardy42 8y ago
> So before all the privacy activists are up in arms, this is pretty incredible and it looks like they're getting pretty close to eliminating all violent crime. Even if it's successful, it will only be used to eliminate the crimes committed by people without connections. Powerful and connected people will be allowed to get away with crimes.
PlasticTank 8y ago
> getting pretty close to eliminating all violent crime Clearly you haven't been on YouTube lately, China must be the world capital of getting stabbed on CCTV.
kbenson 8y ago
There are many theoretical ways to eliminate violent crime that would be to most people's eyes vastly worse than letting crime continue, so it's dangerous to elevate one metric above all others. Here are some theoretical ways to eliminate all crime which would likely be worse for everyone: - Eliminate all people - Keep all people physically separated from each other. - Remove all freedom of expression or free will from people. Those are, obviously, some of the most extreme possible ways to accomplish that goal, but it does illustrate that there's an obvious trade off being made, and that even in cases where it might not be as obvious as these, we should identify and think about the consequences of that trade.
jjcc 8y ago
Violent crime rate is very low because of another reason: Security cameras everywhere. Criminals are either already in jail because of more efficient policing, or stop doing stupid things after watching the real stories on TV about how criminals were caught.

Renaud 8y ago

“AI may quickly point out a corrupt official, but it is not very good at explaining the process it has gone through to reach such a conclusion,” the researcher said. “Although it gets it right in most cases, you need a human to work closely with it.” And that's the crux of the issue with AI being used in any law enforcement situation. If we allow decisions and conclusions being drawn by the AI without a clear explanation of how it got there, we're just creating a monster that will advise -maybe replace- the judgment of law enforcement professionals who won't have the means to question these decisions. Catching corrupt officials is a laudable goal anywhere and I'd like to see it applied to highlight potential irregularities that may require a second look but the danger here is that an unprovable AI be used to make claims or start being used as sufficient evidence to ruin people's lives.

newsbinator 8y ago
I wonder if it gets it right in most cases because officials are corrupt in most cases. It's like building an AI that guesses when it's going to be a rainy day in Seattle.
- WalterBright 8y ago
  My Seattle rain-forecasting algorithm is very good. It forecasts rain tomorrow if it is raining today, and not-rain if it is not raining today.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  >I wonder if it gets it right in most cases because officials are corrupt in most cases. This with a large helping of "the laws were intentionally written to be broad" on the side. With a suitably inclusive definition of "corrupt" every official is corrupt.
jlarocco 8y ago
> If we allow decisions and conclusions being drawn by the AI without a clear explanation of how it got there The funny thing is expert systems were doing that 30 years ago. Seems like this would be a perfect use of them but it's not a buzzword any more. It's crazy how many wheels get poorly reinvented in the software world.

ldp01 8y ago

This reminds me of a detail from the plot of the original Deus Ex. Part way through the game, there is an optional dialogue with a benevolent AI. If you question it enough, it reveals that it is the rejected prototype for an anti-corruption/terrorism AI which was turned off for being too effective: eventually classifying its own masters as a criminal organisation.

rurounijones 8y ago
I have played that game many many times and never came across this conversation. Time to play again I guess.
- ldp01 8y ago
  I think I got the conversation wrong... But it's definitely revealed at some point. My memory has gotten fuzzy! Definitely time to give it another play through.
NikolaNovak 8y ago
Hmm, wow... I played original Deus Ex a few times and do not recall it. Is it part of the recently released "Revision" uplift? :-\
- throwaway2048 8y ago
  Deus Ex had multiple storylines and endings, depending on your actions.
- Barrin92 8y ago
  man this thread makes me want to replay the game again. It's in the original game and it was the MJ12 Daedalus AI, although I'm not quite sure where the player picks that piece of backstory up. It might be in the dialogue with the prototype in the Everett house.
  - ldp01 8y ago
    Yeah it's Daedalus. I Googled it and I'm factually correct but I must have the conversations mixed up in my head... It might be one of the human characters who tells the player about it. Definitely time to give it another play through.

taneq 8y ago

So it's fine to use systems like this on the populace but when used on the government, they make people 'uncomfortable'?

spangry 8y ago
As O'Brien passed the telescreen a thought seemed to strike him. He stopped, turned aside and pressed a switch on the wall. There was a sharp snap. The voice had stopped. Julia uttered a tiny sound, a sort of squeak of surprise. Even in the midst of his panic, Winston was too much taken aback to be able to hold his tongue. 'You can turn it off!' he said. 'Yes,' said O'Brien, 'we can turn it off. We have that privilege.'
- lostlogin 8y ago
  Just finished a few of his and it was well worth it. I’m left with the impression that he seemed to do things just to see what they were like. His descriptions of hunting critters in his squalid Paris bed sit and of going over the top in trench warfare are memorable.
iliketosleep 8y ago
This is exactly what I was thinking, and it's a little scary. The officials are smart enough to know why this kind of system is dangerous and refuse to be subject to it, yet they'll forge full steam ahead whilst applying it to the general populace. I hope they recognize the danger of this.
- smolder 8y ago
  This attitude is not unique to government officials. People are incentivized to care more about themselves and those close to them than the whole entirety of humanity. Malignant self interest is mainstream, cooperation is taboo.
anonthos3261 8y ago
Reminds me of how most of Congress is against Single Payer, yet they are all comfy with their great health insurance.

throwaway010718 8y ago

"it is not very good at explaining the process it has gone through to reach such a conclusion". The above statement is just too convenient and practically superstitious. AI is data hungry. That implies that there are so many past incidences of corruption you can generate large training data sets. So perhaps even a random guess would be too efficient since it is right more often than not.

nerdponx 8y ago
"it is not very good at explaining the process it has gone through to reach such a conclusion". To be fair, generating human-understandable explanations of predictions in a complicated nonlinear model is difficult in general. You typically need to come up with some kind of simplification of the model (like LIME [0]), and it's far from perfect or generally-applicable. [0]: https://homes.cs.washington.edu/~marcotcr/blog/lime/ https://homes.cs.washington.edu/~marcotcr/blog/lime/
- soraki_soladead 8y ago
  SHAP is more recent and does work with (just about) any ML model: https://github.com/slundberg/shap https://github.com/slundberg/shap There's still more work to do in interpretability but models are rarely opaque black boxes with no way to see inside.
logicchains 8y ago
def is_corrupt(data): return rand(0.0, 1.0) < 0.9

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

_-___________-_ 8y ago

I would say that it's far more likely that the system simply never worked properly. The amount of non-functional so-called "AI" features you find in China is astounding. A friend's apartment building got the latest facial-recognition door lock - which will open the door if you hold up his Facebook photo on your phone. Just the other day, my wife found out by accident that her friend's Huawei phone will unlock for her using its version of Face ID. They have similar facial structure but really look nothing alike. China is amazingly good at many things, but _genuine_ technological innovation is not something I've seen in my time here. No doubt this corruption-busting "AI" was developed by companies and people with deep connections to the relevant Party members, but little of the necessary experience or resources to actually carry out the project successfully. When it became clear that it didn't work and would never work, this story was a way to allow the responsible people to save face.

anonthos3261 8y ago
I think this is the case for most countries. Can you give an example of _genuine_ technological innovation that was done outside the US?
pishpash 8y ago
These days, AI means an inefficient chatbot standing in for the function of a simple webform. It's not even about working or not working.
rahimnathwani 8y ago
"the latest facial-recognition door lock - which will open the door if you hold up his Facebook photo on your phone" Meanwhile, Baidu's main campus has had facial recognition on entry gates for years (and the gates cannot be fooled by 2D photos). And Face++ (a Chinese company) provides SDKs to allow you to detect liveness (i.e. not a photo) via their APIs. This is used by many apps when a user registers for the first time. "her friend's Huawei phone will unlock for her using its version of Face ID" There was a well-reported story about someone who got a refund on their iPhone for the same reason. How is this a Chinese phenomenon? "but _genuine_ technological innovation is not something I've seen" How do you define this? There was a white paper linked here recently about how WeChat scales its backend systems to cope with load. Are none of those scaling techniques innovative? (And probably similar for taobao.)

wufufufu 8y ago

I could do the same thing with a heuristic. Just enumerate every government official with a high net worth and investigate them.

ac130kz 8y ago

Here in Kazakhstan a couple of wise guys suggested to use a blockchain to fight crimes within the police itself, and these plans quickly ditched after they realised the blockchain's pure brutality.

raihansaputra 8y ago
Will blockchain be a force as impactful as writing itself? I remember a short story (possibly fictitious) involving Native American tribes and a missionary who introduced writing. The permanence of record changed the way they live and the debate of standings between the tribes. What was once a negotiation tactic (by "remembering" that their ancestors fought together/who married who) becomes merely a bookkeeping routine. A lesson was sometimes, what matters is not what happened in the past. What will change when useful, ubiquitous, and user-friendly blockchain applications are plenty?
- Pete_D 8y ago
  FWIW, that sounds like The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling by Ted Chiang. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truth_of_Fact%2C_the_Truth_of_Feeling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truth_of_Fact%2C_the_Truth...
  - raihansaputra 8y ago
    Yes! The details were really fuzzy to me. Thank you for finding this story!

sonnyblarney 8y ago

The 'problem' with widespread corruption is not identifying it, it's always been an issue of the political will to do something about it. When it's rampant, it's easy to find. So this has nothing to do with AI or even technology. Granted, tech might make it easier to find some bad guys, even then, the fact that stuff is 'online' and in a 'searchable DB' makes this possible, the AI is not necessary.

Proven 8y ago

Corruption (financial and other) is a foundation of unfree societies. In a free society with only private property, how can there be corruption when there is no favor you can hand out without stealing something from an actual person who will come after you?

ngcc_hk 8y ago

High level issue ================ Given how corruption is being used and how low pay the top guy is, i think the AI need HI very much. Put it the other way everyone must be corrupted somehow otherwise how can a us$100k top communist sent her daughter to harvard to study psychology. And the other guy who died of corruption charge run a fast railway wort trillion dollars for petty salary. They have to reform the compensation package ... communist have a hard time here. Hence has to lie ... and if a system can spot liar ... Muslum jailing issue ==================== I heard this black ... but both should not be done and given there is not even fake news independence and judicial system, stange to compare

jacquesm 8y ago

Europe has a similar system in place. https://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=325&intPageId=3587&langId=en https://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=325&intPageId=358...

rafiki6 8y ago

This sounds like a really typical implementation of an AML system. My guess is they actually shut it off because it generated too many false positives. In authoritarian countries, corruption charges are generally trumped up when an official becomes inconvenient for those in power. This means that there are a lot of things officials do that are tolerated and will be used against them once they need to be removed. Therefore the definition of corruption is loose as it's kind of an accepted operating model. If you implement a system like this, suddenly all that acceptable behavior generates lots of positives because your feature selection and classification is based on a threshold no one meets.

deleted 8y ago

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onetimemanytime 8y ago

"AI" might be as simple as running a calculation on his expenses, real estate holdings, $$ deposited, wired out, salary etc. Maybe run for his close family, driver's family too.

LorenPechtel 8y ago

Are officials objecting to it because they know it will expose their dirty deeds?