China to prosecute crimes 'before they happen' with scary 'Invisible Cage' tech

dailystar.co.uk:

AI system will analyse all of the data gathered on China's citizens to try and spot patterns in their daily activity for potential wrong-doing or 'high-risk' behaviour.According to leaked documents obtained by the New York Times, the government will build profiles of citizens using information on their criminal records, gender, race, mental illnesses, Internet history, and 'social credit' using a database of over 2.5 billion facial images.READ NEXT: Wearable exoskeleton makes you so strong that you can cancel your gym membership foreverIf multiple 'high risk' people are found gathering in the same area, an automatic alert will be sent to police units to shut down any gathering or protest.According to the NYT, it can even alert police if someone with a history of mental health problems goes near a school.Maya Wang, a senior China researcher with Human Rights Watch, said: "This is an invisible cage of technology on society, the disproportionate brunt of it being felt by groups of people that are already severely discriminated against in Chinese society."Perhaps the scariest part of the system is that it isn't even operated by a human, but by a machine.

Yin Qi, the creator of Chinese AI startup Megvii behind one of the projects, described his vision for a 'search engine for crime' several years ago that would let police prevent crime ahead of time.He said: "It would be scary if there were actually people watching behind the camera, but behind it is a system.

It's like the search engine we use every day to surf the internet, it's very neutral. It's supposed to be a benevolent thing."The software is now described as a "multidimensional database that stores faces, photos, cars, cases and incident records" and uses this to "dig.