Talk about an invasion of privacy!
Porn AIppraiser
For some unlucky folks, hitting "clear history" may no longer be enough. The South China Morning Post reports that scientists in Beijing claim to have created a prototype device that monitors brain signals to detect when a man is watching porn.
The purported headwear is designed to boost the productivity of professional Chinese content moderators, particularly porn-specific moderators. A totalitarian government using brain-computer interfaces to monitor its official censors? Totally not unsettling!
The Great Firewall of China
The allegedly porn probe — which, notably, is not the first mind-reading technology seen in a Chinese workplace — is said to watch an appraiser's brain patterns. When the wearer sees explicit content, the gadget reportedly registers the spike in brainwaves, setting off an alarm.
Pornography of any kind is technically illegal in China, and the country's censorship system — colloquially dubbed the Great Firewall of China — works hard to scrub their internet of anything they consider indecent.
Right now, China uses both humans and machines to censor their online world, but each have their limits: artificial intelligence makes algorithmic mistakes, and humans need, you know, snacks and sleep.
The researchers told the paper that their porn-policing chapeau is intended to help appraisers and AI systems meet in the middle, providing greater speed and accuracy overall.
But the developers' study, published in the Chinese Journal of Electronic Measurement and Instrumentation, showed some pretty significant gaps in the science. There was only a claimed 80 percent success rate, which isn't exactly conformational, and the test group included just 15 college-aged men (naturally).
Plus, researchers weren't actually able to show participants any truly explicit images — due to current Chinese law, all pictures shown to test subjects had to already be censored, to a degree, via pixelation and black bars.
To say that any tech that claims to read minds raises serious ethical questions is an understatement. But this disturbing-sounding device doesn't sound like it's there quite yet, so let's hope it stays that way.
More on censorship in China: Censors in China Are Having a Hard Time Silencing All the Rage Right Now
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