Facial Recognition Technology in China

Abstract

The main concern of all data driven technologies in Artificial Intelligence (AI) are the expansion of connectivity around the World, and higher standards of living. Many countries around the world show interests to this technology and even a powerful economic driven country like China promised to take over the leadership of AI by 2030. (Bieri, 2018)

Some AI technologies like Facial recognition can lead to higher security and more comfort in life. This groundbreaking technology enables people to get authenticated through a higher security method than using password, PINs, or plastic cards. It is hard to memorize each individual Password or PIN and they can be stolen very easy.However, the biological traits of a person cannot be stolen, forgotten, lost, or copied. (Rabia Jafri, 2009) 

This technology can also have a dark side when it misuses by some powers like,providing the states with a controlling power, which could be misused by them. In this paper the facial recognition and its usage in different regions of China will be reviewed and discussed.

1.  Introduction

Face recognition technology is a technology which has a higher accuracy and lower miscalculation among the other biometric technologies. This technology can be applied for different purposes, such as securing information, smart cards, surveillances, etc. (Xiaoyang Tana, 2006)

Invention of every technology can have equally good and dark side. Technology by itself is an instrument which can be used to improve the human’s life but also can be used in a wrong way and violates the human’s right.China is one of the powerful states which its government eagerly increases a huge number of surveillance camera among the whole states and created a vast CCTV network for different purposes but mainly for controlling the 1.4 billion citizens of its states. (Fan Liang, 2018)

There are currently, 170 million surveillance cameras installed across different cities of China which used to control crimes, toilet paper usage, and the shopping behavior of citizens. (Jennifer Krueckeberg, 2018)

2.  What is the Facial Recognition Technology and How does it Function?

Facial recognition technology is a biometric based technology which identifies and validate individual faces by receiving and analyzing the digital images and data from each face. It has been developed and used since 1960s. However, this technology has very limited functions at that time. In 1973, a Japanese researcher, Takeo Kanade succeeded to accomplish an accuracy of 75% over 800 portraits. (Benson, 2017)

The recent and most innovative form of this technology contains a software which works with AI to record the features and characters of a person’s face. Then the system will search for a match in the database and can also categories the human based on his or her characteristics like age, emotions, or ethnicity. (Miller, 2019)

This method can be used to recognize faces even with a camera from distance. Even without any needs of participation or individual awareness. (Rabia Jafri, 2009)

This technology is rapidly growing and is used on daily life. Unlocking your smart phone and payments in some stores can be several examples of this technology. Some software like the Quividi, with an accuracy of 80% distinguishes the mood of the shoppers and with an accuracy of 90 percent it can identify the gender of the shopper. (Hooijdonk, 2019)

Generally, face recognition technology can be applied in different devices for different purposes; it can be used for civil and law enforcement, in “forensic applications”, or in applications which secure the electronic transactions of citizens like in e-banking, e-health or entree to infrastructures and networks. (Tsalakanidou, 2019)

An example of FRT in social networks is Facebook. Facebook has used facial recognition based on AI technology, called “Deep face”. It can recognize the human faces in 9 layers of digital images. (Taigman, Yang, Wolf, & Ranzato, 2019)

This technology has even been used in some computer games and “Interactive movie posters”. An example of this, is Dumbo demo which has been presented by Disney and Accenture in SXSW conference. In this demo the facial recognition technology has been used and Dumbo (the baby elephant character in Disney) in this poster will be smile at you if you look at him happy and it will look at you irritably if your mood is bad. The movie poster can read emotions by your face and reacts based on your emotions. (Rivera, 2019)

Face recognition can be divided into 3 main steps: “Face Detection”, “Face extraction”, and “Face Recognition”. (Chao, 2018)

Face detection is about the analyzing the image or map of face valleys and points through a software which is able to measure “the golden triangle” of a face and generate a print of the face with the “nodal points”. Afterwards, the generated face pattern will be compared with all the existed face pattern in the database and at the end the software will find the closest match to the face print. (Bhatia, 2013)

3.  FRT in China

FRT is leading-edge development technology which involve a giant global market more than $ 530 million which will be reach to $1.43 billion by 2025. Currently several hotels and stores’ payment method in China is via facial recognition. (Hooijdonk, 2019)

A university in China used the FRT as a provisional to monitor the attendance and the attitude of the students in its classes. Yet, Chinese government proposed to install the cameras and use the FRT in schools. This is not the first time that the minister of education in china proposed an AI technology, as currently some of the schools in china have a policy of using “Intelligent uniforms” to control the location of the students. (BBC, 2019)

Since 2016 FaceTech has been used for the ease of payment method in china. In 2016, a “selfie pay app” has been propelled in china called master card identity check. Customer could confirm the payment by recognizing their face via the FRT used by the app. (Cox, 2017)

In addition, Shenzhen city in southern of china has a reputation in having strict traffic police. In 2017 the traffic police used Facial recognition technology to reduce the serious problems of jaywalking in this province by not only displaying the jaywalkers on a giant LED in publicly in the middle of the city, but also they will be warned via message as soon as they breached the rules. In April 2018, a criminal was entered t a concert with a 60,000 attendance in Nanchang of china. The police arrested this man by identifying his face through FRT which being used in the entrance of the stadium. The man was shocked as he did not expect to be recognized so rapidly among 60,000 audience of the concert.Also, a new face recognition system named Sky Net “Tianwang” can scan 1.3 billion faces of the china’s population in about one second.Moreover, FRT is also used tremendously in hailing and riding a cap. Uber is one of the companies in China which uses facial recognition in china for this purpose. (Wright, 2018)

4.  Higher Security or Less Freedom

As the technology advances new challenges will be aroused. FRT is one of the technologies which could violate the human rights and the ethical challenges of this technology is becomes the main concern of many nations. By 2020 the government of china has a plan to execute a social credit system to encourage its citizens to obey the law and improve their lifestyle. However, the system will track the private life of Chinese citizens. this tracking causes those which considered as bad citizens to be punished and the good one to be rewarded with incentives. Wrong behavior will decrease the score of the citizens. Even the buying behavior of the citizens will be controlled and scored. For instance, if a citizen often buys alcohol in a month, then he receives negative scores as the alcohol is a symbol of the person’s dependency. And if a citizen buys pampers; he will be considered as a family person and will receive more positive point. the low score of citizens will cause them and his/ her family members some difficulties in their lives. For instance, the opportunity and future of a child might be in danger by preventing him/her from further study if his family continuous to earn negative points in the social credit system. This credit system might create frustrations among citizens. (Duong, Hurtado, Kuntjoro, & Marak, 2018)

Some publications believe that, the facial recognition revolution in the technology of china is part of CCP (Chinese communist Party’s) improvement which was close to lose earlier. Thus, the reason of this vast expansion of the surveillance camera and intense control of the users are explained as the fear of the government from its citizens.  (Wright, 2018)

5.  Conclusion

FRT as a Biometric technology is revolutionary technology which can reduce the number of frauds and increase the security by limiting the access or preventing the illegal admission to the confidential data like bank account. This technology has a tremendous progress in the past decade and countries like china try to be soon the leader of this technology. However, this technology brought some dark side for the citizens of china as its government violate the human rights by using the facial recognition as way of controlling citizens in all aspects of their lives. What distressing the world is that with the progress of this technology the capacity of abusing this technology will increase as well, and the people’s life at risk in some nations (especially those with an autocracy regimes) more challenging and problematic.Technology should only be used for the comfort of the nations. Thus, Human right organization has to explore these violations and ensure people that the technological advancement will not exacerbate the quality and right of people in any nation.

6. Bibliography

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