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It’s usually believed that authoritarian governments resist technical innovation in a method that finally weakens them each politically and economically. However a extra difficult story emerges from a brand new study on how China has embraced AI-driven facial recognition as a instrument of repression.
“What we discovered is that in areas of China the place there may be extra unrest, that results in better authorities procurement of facial-recognition AI,” says coauthor Martin Beraja, an MIT economist. Not solely has use of the expertise apparently labored to suppress dissent, however it has spurred software program improvement. The students name this mutually reinforcing state of affairs an “AI-tocracy.”
Actually, they discovered, companies that had been granted a authorities contract for facial-recognition applied sciences produce about 49% extra software program merchandise within the two years after gaining the contract than earlier than. “We look at if this results in better innovation by facial-recognition AI companies, and certainly it does,” Beraja says.
Including all of it up, the case of China signifies how autocratic governments can doubtlessly discover their political energy enhanced, relatively than upended, once they harness technological advances—and even generate extra financial development than they might have in any other case.
The students at the moment are finding out the extent to which China is exporting facial-recognition tech world wide—highlighting a mechanism by means of which authorities repression might develop globally.
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