It was a bright and cold day in April, and the clocks were striking Thirteen.
A police officer wearing dark sunglasses scans the face of passengers leaving a train in Zhengzou, China. The screen on the inside of the cop's shades bring up the name, birthday, occupation and criminal record of a man she singles out as suspicious: Wēn sī dùn shǐmìsī (Winston Smith). Born April 24th, 1984. Infractions include repeated violations for jaywalking and posting political opinions on social media without a permit. The officer also reads that Wēn sī dùn shǐmìsī was recently fired from his last place of employment. He was fired in part because these infractions were reported by the Ministry of Public Safety to his employer. The company reported that the infractions lowered his citizen score below acceptable levels, and that he was let go last Friday at 6pm. The officer concludes that this man is dangerous, and she was right to single him out. But there is no warrant for his arrest, so she cannot detain him.
Though the citizen score program is currently voluntary in China, everything in the previous paragraph might as well not be a fictional spin of a prescient dystopian novel by a man who admitted he never read the books he reviewed for a living. The first sentence in the previous paragraph is the first sentence from George Orwell's "1984", Winston Smith is the name of the main character from the novel, but railway police in China are indeed using facial recognition eye glasses to screen passengers. The Ministry of Public Safety is a real entity in China, and they are reporting infractions that lower your citizen score, such as jaywalking (captured by a network of surveillance cameras), and posting political opinions on social media without a permit, to your employer.
In the capital of central China’s Henan province, the Chinese Communist newspaper People’s Daily reported that security personnel are wearing the (Google Glass-ish) unknown spectacles with camera and projector components to verify identities, catch any identity anomalies, and spot criminals whose faces match with those wanted by the government and police.
The logic behind deploying these devices is the flurry of activity and increase in passengers brought to the station by Spring Festival. The beginning of the lunar new year is among the busiest times for traveling in China. According to the People's Daily, officials are handling 389 million train trips from February 1st to March 12th, when sojourners return to their homes and normal schedules.
Though technical details are sketchy, glasses must use some version of an image matching algorithm connected to a police database of citizens faces. The report cited in the People's Daily talks about the effectiveness of the program, having identified seven citizens suspected of crimes from human-trafficking to hit-and-run accidents.
Facial recognition technology companies are working with the government to implement more an more of these technologies. They are coming to China in a major way, starting with facial recognition kiosks that scan the faces of passengers and their travel information quickly. Chinese police departments are implementing facial recognition technology all over the country as the government's plan to pursue and develop the world's most sophisticated AI technology continues. Reports like this one by the South China Morning Post about the country’s plan's to develop an AI camera system to see all 1.3 billion citizens and identify any one of them within three seconds will continue unchecked by concerns about inherent civil liberties.
Read about more uses of AI with Artificial Intelligence and Engineering.