China is Now Monitoring Employees' Brainwaves and Emotions (fastcompany.com) 123
From a report: The Orwellian-as-all-get-out practice is being conducted using "emotional surveillance technology" by both businesses in China and the country's military, reports the South China Morning Post. The tech uses small wireless sensors embedded in employees' hats that can monitor brainwaves. That brainwave data is then analyzed by AI to tell when an employee is tired, anxious, or even full of rage. One company using the brain-monitoring tech says profits have increased by $315 million since rolling it out way back in 2014. Other uses of the tech include monitoring drivers of trains to tell if they've fallen asleep or are at risk of doing so. It's important to note the technology cannot read people's thoughts.
Phrenology at a different level (Score:5, Interesting)
We barely understand how emotions work and now we want to monitor emotions in people who have every reason to hide them?
Good luck...
Re:Leftists are Envious (Score:5, Insightful)
Last I checked both sides lie to further their agenda.
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You do know that both sides accuse the other one of being the Niagara Falls, yes?
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Not trying anything. It's simply what both sides claim. Yeah, we lie, but THE OTHERS are way worse.
Yeah. Sure. In the end, I wish the left and right would come together like matter and antimatter and annihilate each other in a flash so we sane people could start rebuilding finally.
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One does not have to rely on claims from either sides to observe what is really happening.
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But that's pretty much what people do. Nobody is looking for what really is anymore. Everyone just waits 'til someone spews something that fits their own world view and that becomes the truth because someone else said it.
You can say the worst bullshit, as long as it fits someone's narrative it becomes their reality.
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If you get that impression from television, try watching less of it (even cut the cord) and if you get it from your surroundings, meet new people.
On the other hand, if you are seduced by the apparent results of these self serving opportunists and wishes to emulate their behavior, I wish you the worse.
Hopefully, you are stating what you are observing and not proposing a modus operandi.
This behavior is not a new thing and has been shown
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I have no TV. I know no people who feel the urge to spew propaganda. Where I observe that is for example here. Take a look around the boards and you'll find that, no matter the topic, some goofball will feel the urge to throw in how Trump will save us or how he should be thrown in jail or how Hillary is a (insert random insult here).
I remember a time when there was actually sensible discussion possible here. And I'm not talking about a sensible discussion about politics (that I have never seen, neither here
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Kudos for that.
If its worth anything, this sub-thread allowed me to get to know you a little better, and I mean that in a positive way.
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I was just reading an article on the BBC about a row over "cultural appropriation" because a girl wore a chinese style dress. If free speech rights extend to freedom of expressing yourself, I'm going to say the left doesn't have much of a leg to stand on with free speech rights right now. In my day, wearing something from another culture, so long as not done in a mocking way, was celebrating diversity, I guess that's wrong now. Toss in PC culture which attempts to silence anyone who says "disagreeable" t
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"I was just reading an article on the BBC about a row over "cultural appropriation" because a girl wore a chinese style dress."
Don't you know, that the new political correctness.
It's also in the movie business, only real Indians can play Indians, only Africans can play Africans and I guess for SF it will soon mean that only Martians can play Martians.
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I wonder how long I may still eat Chinese food.
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You seem to be assuming that all on the left have identical views, and none support free speech. It isn't the case.
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Which side supports free speech rights
The side that doesn't throw a riot when a speaker comes to campus?
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I'm looking at you, THX1138. (Score:2)
Supposedly the right and left loves of the brain control the left and right limbs, respectively. Thus left handers are rightminded. That is what you meant by leftists, right?
Next up based on your brainwave evidence you will be arrested for drug evasion. I'm looking at you thx1138, you dumb threep.
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Which side supports free speech rights
Not the side with the cries for censorship, "hate speech" laws, etc.
which side complains about the "lies" of the liberal media and their inauguration crowd numbers?
Everyone but the liberals.
You haven't asked the important question. Which side is correct? (Hint: It's not the liberals.)
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EEG can really tell how alert you are - if you are starting to drift, so I think it is fine for drivers, pilots, dangerous machine operators etc. Fine and proven technology. Emotions? Not yet.
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This sort of thing makes me so ANGRY.
****zzzztttt****
Ahh. better now
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My first thought was, what a great way to better understand how the brain works. I just wish it wasn't being practiced/trained by eastasia...or was it eurasia...
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They really want to examine every shit from you.
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The more you think you have something to hide, the more China wants to know about it.
And they don't need 100% hitrate. They only need to cow you into restricting yourself to thinking only part-approved thoughts and feeling party-approved feelings. They've managed that without the tech for going on how long already? This is just an incremental refinement, not a revolution.
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A system with lots of noise and false positives is perfect for the intended application.
You just ignore it except when you want a pretense for punishing somone. Then having selected the person you want to find something wrong with you wait for their feed to have a random blip and pounce. You point to the data that says they were emotionally unstable or whatever and claim to have saved the day by putting them away. Do it infrequently enough that on average the risk is negligible and only to one person at a t
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We can't identify feelings or emotions (many people erroneously conflate the two) even with the most advanced and cumbersome brain imaging technologies, e.g. fMRI & PET.
However, it's relatively easy to measure people's levels of cognitive arousal. I think we should introduce these arousal sensor hats for senators, congressmen, members of parliament, etc.. It'd be great to see when they're making evidence-informed rational decisions or just acting out of some incidental state of arousal. It could tell us
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"We" is perhaps the most potentially dangerous word in such discussions. Though "they" is not far behind it, and may be worse.
Notice how the antecedents are different in the two uses? And how one of the uses doesn't even include the person using it? (I'm assuming he or she doesn't run any businesses or military organizations in China.)
Yet! (Score:3, Insightful)
It's important to note the technology cannot read people's thoughts.
YET!
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Ummm...why? To quote Professor Snape, “The mind is not a book, to be opened at will and examined at leisure. Thoughts are not etched on the inside of skulls, to be perused by an invader. The mind is a complex and many-layered thing.”
That seems apropos. The brain itself has various parts that work in parallel. What part of it contains the mind that it may be read? It is likely there is no single part, so that parallel parts contents would have to be assembled into a coherent picture. That itself
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Sorry, but it was correct before you changed it. There may come a technology that can read people's thoughts, in some sense, but this won't be it, and it won't be a straightforward development of this technology. I'd be really surprised if it didn't require surgery.
Tin foil hats (Score:3)
They made fun of me decades ago, but who's got the last laugh now!
Re:Tin foil hats (Score:5, Funny)
They have the last laugh. Little do you know they put the sensors *right in the tinfoil*. You *thought* you were protecting yourself but you just played right into their hands.
funny hats (Score:3)
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A tin foil hat would probably increase conductivity, making the brain scanners more accurate.
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A tin foil hat would probably increase conductivity, making the brain scanners more accurate.
Yep, the whole tin-foil hat thing was secretly promulgated by the government to make it easier to track and monitor the people who can see through all of the government's tricks and lies. That's why I built a farraday cage around my head. Now I just have to deal with people asking me why I have a copper birdcage on my head.
$315 million increase in profits? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Their publicly disclosed net income
There it is. Obviously the Chinese government was paying them under the table to use their employees as guinea pigs to test the brainwave technology. Personally, if I were a Chinese citizen, I would be a little wary if they started handing out free hats at the next Party meeting.
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Don't let the facts get in the way of propaganda. They need people to think it's effective so they don't reject the idea.
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Positive Uses (Score:3)
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Do you want Psycho Pass? Because this is how you get Psycho Pass...
"The story takes place in an authoritarian future dystopia, where omnipresent public sensors continuously scan the mental states of every passing citizen. Collected data on both present mentality and aggregated personality data is used to gauge the probability of that citizen committing a crime, the rating referred to as that citizen's Psycho-Pass. Authorities are alerted whenever excessive ratings are detected, and officers of the Public S
dystopian future from Snowcrash (Score:3)
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As reported (and as I believe) it can't actually detect emotions. It sounds like what it detects is level of arousal, but it's probably a bit more specific than that. It might well detect arousal of Alpha, Beta, Delta waves. (IIRC, Delta waves ramp up as you drop off to sleep.)
OTOH, I expect they've also got a temperature sensor, which they didn't mention, to detect blood flow near the forehead. Hot headed isn't just a figure of speech.
When I read one of these articles... (Score:2)
But at the same time, I also lament that tech like this could actually work for our betterment, if only we could find a way to ensure it was deployed by trustworthy people with adequate safeguards against misuse. For example this could identify people who need some form of support to get them out of whatever rut they are in (rather than labeling them as undesirables, throwing them on the trash heap, and hiring someone else o retrain from scratch). It could be a
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There's an easy solution to that - don't fucking network it. The vast majority of people who are spinning out of control don't know it. Just telling them they have an issue can get a lot of people to seek help.
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if only we could find a way to ensure it was deployed by trustworthy people with adequate safeguards against misuse
Said of every privacy invasive technology ever invented. It has not happened yet. I don't see any evidence whatsoever from any time in history that something privacy invasive has not employed in an abusive fashion at relatively high frequency. I have not even see much evidence to suggest measures to address the abuse after the fact really put an end to it; except in very small examples either geographically or in narrowness of rule. Take HIPPA for example. I do pen-testing - medical industry pretty oft
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Don't be stupid - ALL of that technology is being used to invade your privacy. I never claimed ALL of that technology was ONLY being used to invade your privacy. Yes I do pen testing that is why I understand things like side channels and unintended information disclosures etc. Clearly you don't
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Black Mirror again (Score:1)
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1984 worked great as an instructional book for them, why wouldn't they move on once they completed that?
Re: Black Mirror again (Score:1)
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That was my point. They implemented everything from 1984 and have moved on to implementing things from more recent sources. Like Black Mirror. Not "no longer do 1984" moved on, outgrew cause it didn't imagine smartphones and AI moved on.
Real Headline (Score:3)
Hawthorne Effect (Score:1)
Just remove your cap ... (Score:2)
...before going postal.
Of course (Score:2)
One company using the brain-monitoring tech says profits have increased by $315 million since rolling it out way back in 2014.
This company makes and sells brain-monitoring equipment.
This is an old scam (Score:2)
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As opposed to companies wisely buying McKinsey Consultants and Six-Sigma black belts.
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McKinsley (founded 1926) is "newer" than brain reading machines, millimeter wave cameras or even modern lie detectors?Heck, Six Sigma is older than the first two.
What do you keep in your little box? (Score:2)
Cells.
Gives them a day off when they need it? (Score:1)
Re:"China" (Score:5, Insightful)
Probably because the biggest Chinese corporations are in fact state run...
What I don't understand is why idiots seem to forget that China is still a totalitarian regime with no real concept of human rights. Slather as much lipstick on that pig as you like, its still a place where if you don't show proper deference to the ruling party you can end up in prison or worse. Heck the forced abortions only stopped in 2k13 and we kinda take their word for it they really have stopped.
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First off India is actually by most measures modernizing more rapidly than China and growing a pace economically speaking. Second put on your thinking cap here. One child is below the replacement rate.
So it was never really one child it was one child unless you were part of the elite ruling class, in which case it was many children. So the policy was always about using human beings as automatons, you and your family don't matter you exist to serve the sate nothing more. It was not about "we will drown"
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Those of you not aware of the Chinese 16-Character Policy [linkedin.com] probably should be...