Big data meets Big Brother as China moves to rate its citizens
wired.co.uk
wired.co.uk
If no ranking criteria exists then everyone would literally treat everyone else exactly the same and the world would be a boring and informationless place.
You are welcome to propose non-linear (e.g. multidimensional) ranking criteria however. But even with money, it is not literally the be-all-and-end-all of life, there are many things where you need more than just money, to be able to achieve.
Your analogy dovetails nicely with arguments against cashless societies though, as it would be easy to implement a centralized authority over currency clearing using a social rating system and centralized authority over banks.
It's amazing to me to see the dystopian comedies of the 70's and 80's becoming all too true. Another good example is Network from 1976 based on the farcical premise that a news organization would be taken over by the network's entertainment division.
China is systematizing, really appifying, inequality and privilege. The public in the US is starting to push back on that same privilege. To me, Sam's quote, this article, and Erin Griffith's other recent piece[0] all make sense together in a way that really concerns me.
People like Sam Altman are concerning, since he holds the top spot in the world's best startup accelerator. He alone can give China unlimited power in accomplishing their goals: silencing dictatorship critics, bankrupt other countries, etc.
I think more concerning is the underlying perspective rather than his specific views on China. What you see is the assumption that one's experience generalizes and is the experience of all. The internet in many ways has made this worse rather than better because it removes some of the few remaining structures that force you to regularly and meaningfully interact with people of different life experiences (and no...your uber driver doesn't count).
His views on China, based on his experiences in China, are no different than the critiques of silicon valley startup culture as a whole. THey beleive their experience generalizes.
I talked about this in a class I taught once where we were trying to engage students in seeing the limits of their understanding of the user's they were designing for. I had them read an article from fortune/Inc....some magazine I can't remember or find... that was about startups related to pregnancy. The decidedly white-male founder base really stood out. If I remember, there were only 3 of the 10 startups that existed a year after the article...2 of those 3 were the 2 of 10 with female cofounders.
You're reading too much into Sam's quote. This is almost certainly because East Asia has zero PC culture (homogenous populations; nothing in history), so he doesn't feel those particular pressures there that he's reacting against here. That's all.
'PC culture' is not a thing. what you call PC culture is free speech working as designed...everyone has an equal right to free speech, free action, and free thought. What you call PC culture is in reality nothing more than a group with power demanding their thinking be privileged above critique.
The fact that a person with extreme financial and social power feels 'freer' expressing their point of view in a totalitarian regime than in a place where someone with lesser power might have their own free speech rights is a demonstration of how free speech fails not how it thrives.
Fetishizing rights, as is becoming common in the US, is an impediment to equitable access to the power those rights give. It confuses the issue and is nothing more than a recuperative act[0] designed to reinforce existing structures of power.
Not to mention the life-long mark of Cain that you get if you, heaven forbid, are convicted of a crime. Sorry, but we don't hire/lend to/do business with ex-cons.
[1] You can also be arbitrarily denied boarding an airplane in the United States because your name ended up on a no-fly list. You have practically no legal recourse for getting yourself removed from it.
I think this will be a growth area for AI, where we will have bots running pretending to be us so they can properly minmax all of the measures showing us as model participants in a system that "... will forge a public opinion environment where keeping trust is glorious. It will strengthen sincerity in government affairs, commercial sincerity, social sincerity and the construction of judicial credibility."
I have already become acutely aware of self censorship, especially with posts associated with my name, out of expectation of something similar making its way into the US. Heck, I would not be remotely surprised to find out Facebook already has a working prototype to associate and score people based on their connections.
I think it would not. Americans value their individuality too much. I think "trustworthiness" is not really a characteristic that Americans would want to rate each other on.
I guess I don't see this plan as any different.
Just plain weird to me if you ask my opinion.
Link: http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/the-social-credit...
"The Chinese government plans to launch its Social Credit System in 2020. The aim? To judge the trustworthiness – or otherwise – of its 1.3 billion residents": The more accurate subtitle, which you can now see since you gave us your click. Gotcha!
Credit rating is nothing new, be it for people, corporations or even countries.
Yet.
FTA:
“Friends matter, too. The fifth category is interpersonal relationships. What does their choice of online friends and their interactions say about the person being assessed? Sharing what Sesame Credit refers to as "positive energy" online, nice messages about the government or how well the country's economy is doing, will make your score go up.”