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583261-electricity-flowing-through-computer brain cpu

China has been pushing the dystopian aspects of its society fairly aggressively of tardily. The land has rolled out a social "credit" monitoring system, in which citizens are rated based on the social media posts and actions of both themselves and their friends and family. Those with low social credit scores have been banned from purchasing domestic flights, banned from certain schools, prevented from using credit cards, and blocked from certain jobs. Now, one Chinese house is claiming to have gone yet further, and monitors the brainwaves of its employees through sensors embedded in caps they're required to wear.

Information technology might audio like a joke, but the visitor, Hangzhou Zhongheng Electric, is absolutely serious. Co-ordinate to the South China Forenoon Post, Hangzhou claims it uses this data to monitor stress levels and adjust interruption times and work assignments. The SCMP report says, "Curtained in regular safety helmets or uniform hats, these lightweight, wireless sensors constantly monitor the wearer'southward brainwaves and stream the data to computers that utilise artificial intelligence algorithms to detect emotional spikes such as low, anxiety or rage."

Hangzhou Zhongheng Electric claims that information technology has boosted company profits past roughly 2 billion yuan ($315 meg) since information technology began in 2022. There's reason to be exceptionally skeptical of that number. First, at that place's absolutely no bear witness that the data gathered by EEGs can actually be used for the purposes the company says it's using information technology for. Attempting to read emotional country information from an EEG based on information gathered from an in-cap sensor is anything but straightforward, as this paper details. It'southward theoretically possible to use an EEG to assemble some data well-nigh what a person is feeling in whatever given moment, simply it's not nearly every bit simple equally slapping some electrodes on someone's skin and measuring how "happy" they are feeling.

Monitoring

The only prototype we were able to obtain for the brainwave monitoring arrangement. Apologies for potato.

This blazon of dystopian monitoring is precisely the kind of tool that could undermine employee morale rather than raising it. Employers obviously have an involvement in the wellness and well-beingness of their employees, but information technology's non hard to see how this kind of information could exist used to corruption or threaten individuals. It'due south too not at all articulate how these states could be correlated to useful information about employees as a group. Non only are people going to feel different baseline levels of stress, simply people often feel stress while at work for reasons unrelated to the job itself. Meanwhile, some people simply don't become peculiarly stressed, no matter what they're doing. Trying to create any kind of "standard" people are supposed to adhere to is just nightmarish.

The idea that one's employer is entitled to brainwave information about someone'south mental state is as close to thoughtcrime as nosotros've e'er been. There are no benefits large enough to justify this kind of intrusion into people's personal lives. In that location is no acceptable reason for giving an employer access to what someone is thinking or feeling. It's a virtual certainty that Hangzhou Zhongheng Electric is exaggerating both the effectiveness of this technology and the money they've made past using information technology, just in the off hazard that someone actually invents it, permit's be clear: This is not a adequacy that has whatsoever business existence deployed in any company, anywhere, for any reason.