China develops AI to read party members’ minds

Chinese researchers say their latest AI can judge party members’ loyalty and make them more receptive to ‘thought education’.

Xi Jinping waves after a ceremony in Hong Kong. Picture: AFP.

Chinese researchers claim to have developed artificial intelligence they say can read the minds of Communist Party members and make them more receptive to “thought education”.

Hefei Comprehensive National Science Centre said the system could read facial expressions and brain waves, analysing how attentive a member was to “thought and political education” so as to “further solidify their confidence and determination to be grateful to the party, listen to the party and follow the party”.

However, the article disappeared from the internet shortly after its publication on July 1, the party’s founding day, apparently after public outcry that such an AI system was too much even in a society where the state routinely compromises individual privacy.

The institute said it has encouraged 43 party members on the research team to take party lessons while being monitored with artificial intelligence.

In a short video, a researcher enters a kiosk, sits down before a screen and scrolls for articles promoting party policy and achievements. The kiosk can see the researcher’s expressions, possibly via surveillance cameras.

“On one hand, it can judge how party members have accepted thought and political education,” the article said. “On the other hand, it will provide real data for thought and political education so it can be improved and enriched.”

Such lessons, once brushed aside as dull by party members, have gained new attention from President Xi, who, as general secretary of the party, demands absolute loyalty to it and declares “thought and political education” essential to the goal.

The party has already introduced an indoctrination app, where the country’s 96.77 million party members are required to earn points by reading articles, watching short videos and answering questions.

The app, Study Xi to Make China Strong, was released last year to “widen the channel of learning, and the future will be brighter”. Users are compelled to earn a daily quota of 40 points by reading four articles, each taking four minutes, watch three nine-minute videos, and answering three questions.

As early as 2019, the Study Times, a party publication focusing on theories, said the algorithm developed through artificial intelligence could be used to “gauge the thought condition of party members” and that the technology would meet the demand that party education “go into the head and the heart of party members”.

“It will truly enhance a party member’s political quality and ideological thought,” the party publication said.

The institute in Hefei was set up at the end of 2019, jointly by the provincial government of Anhui and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

In June, the eastern province of Zhejiang, home to tech giants including Alibaba, launched a “smart thought and political education” system to “quantitatively evaluate” the growth of a student, according to the Science and Technology Daily, a state-run newspaper.

The country’s researchers have used brainwave-reading technology to detect whether one is viewing pornography or to tell whether a factory worker is getting tired.

In the eastern city of Hangzhou, cameras have been installed in the classrooms at a local middle school, where the cameras survey the room every 30 seconds to capture student behaviours, such as if they are reading, raising hands, writing, standing up, listening or dozing off. Facial expressions such as happiness, sadness, anger and repulsion are also recorded to tell whether a student is engaged.

The Times