Sébastien Le Belzic, edited by Alexandre Dalifard
modified to
2:00 p.m., January 27, 2023
The race for AI. In China, one of the countries with the United States most at the forefront in the field of artificial intelligence, it is the State which is maneuvering with the ambition of being the world number one in the sector of artificial intelligence. by 2030. This includes massive investments in research and development. China is already the second largest AI market in the world, behind the Americans. This market is worth more than 30 billion dollars, not counting the large subsidies. With the “little giants” program, more than 150 billion dollars have been distributed to start-ups. This creates an ecosystem that spans surveillance, health, finance, and transportation. It’s called the smart city, smart cities entirely driven by artificial intelligence.
Kai Fu Li, one of the industry gurus, runs several businesses in Beijing. For him, no doubt, China will be THE number one in the world by 2030. “The reason I make these predictions is that I was in China, watching this incredible ability to catch up in the field. technologies. They are tenacious, enterprising, with a powerful ecosystem second only to Silicon Valley and of course a huge data market. And for artificial intelligence, they are essential”.
facial recognition
Moreover, facial recognition is one of the areas where China is particularly advanced. With almost one surveillance camera for every two inhabitants, this country is one of the most controlled in the world. In elevators, restaurants, at every crossroads and even in taxis, the Chinese are filmed. A particularly sophisticated system links some of these digital spies to a facial recognition program. It should be known that all the faces of the inhabitants are digitized as well to identify delinquents in the middle of the crowd as someone who crosses outside the nails.
The system also allows you to pay in stores by presenting your face or to take the train without needing a ticket. A big brother company, all controlled by the state. “The Chinese government has access to a lot of data that Internet companies have. It can retrieve data from all its surveillance cameras but also from Alibaba, for example, which does e-commerce and who knows what that you buy thanks to that”, underlines Liza Line, author of a book on surveillance in China.
A controlling company
Faced with this, the Chinese rather see the good side of things. Before, they had to pay everything in cash, credit cards never worked. Today, everything is driven by artificial intelligence. It is now possible to pay with your face and take taxis without a driver. Surveillance cameras are everywhere, so there are no more petty crimes. On the other hand, this raises many questions, particularly with regard to the surveillance of ethnic minorities, political dissidents or journalists.
An artificial intelligence is even able to gauge the loyalty of Communist Party members simply by observing their behavior. AI is also coming into classrooms to monitor that students are paying attention. With this system, China very quickly switches to a society of control, which can be quite distressing.