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It’s typically believed that authoritarian governments resist technical innovation in a method that in the end weakens them each politically and economically. However a extra sophisticated story emerges from a brand new examine on how China has embraced AI-driven facial recognition as a software of repression. 

“What we discovered is that in areas of China the place there’s extra unrest, that results in higher 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.” 

In truth, they discovered, corporations that have 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 higher innovation by facial-recognition AI corporations, 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, reasonably than upended, after they harness technological advances—and even generate extra financial progress 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 which authorities repression might develop globally.

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