Panopticon Reborn: Social Credit as Regulation for the Age of AI

Paper by Kevin Werbach: “Technology scholars, policy-makers, and executives in Europe and the United States disagree violently about what the digitally connected world should look like. They agree on what it shouldn’t: the Orwellian panopticon of China’s Social Credit System (SCS). SCS is a government-led initiative to promote data-driven compliance with law and social values, using databases, analytics, blacklists, and software applications. In the West, it is widely viewed as a diabolical effort to crush any spark of resistance to the dictates of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its corporate emissaries. This picture is, if not wholly incorrect, decidedly incomplete. SCS is the world’s most advanced prototype of a regime of algorithmic regulation. It is a sophisticated and comprehensive effort not only to expand algorithmic control, but also to restrain it. Understanding China’s system is crucial for resolving the great challenges we face in the emerging era of relentless data aggregation, ubiquitous analytics, and algorithmic control….(More)”.