Communist dystopia? China claims its tech lets employers read workers' minds

What’s going on?

Chinese companies have claimed they use artificial intelligence to monitor workers on the job, purportedly tracking their emotions with brain sensors embedded in helmets.

While the report coming from Chinese media should be taken with a grain of salt, the idea is that each worker’s brainwaves can be monitored to track panic, sadness and other emotions so fatigued workers can be required to take a break. Hangzhou Zhongheng Electric claims that it’s boosted profits by $315 million since 2014 by using the devices on its 40,000 workers.

Didn’t China implement a creepy points system recently?

Yes. In another invasion of privacy, the country has been working on a "social credit system" that uses facial recognition to track and score each citizen. If you are flagged as a problematic citizen, the system can take measures like blocking your children from private school and preventing you from owning property.

Glenn’s take:

Glenn was fairly optimistic about the state of the world on today’s show – until he and Stu looked at this story out of China. The world of “Black Mirror” is here, and we can see it not only in China’s scheme to try to read workers’ minds but also in the country’s “social credit system,” which is slated to give each Chinese citizen a personal score by 2020.

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