In China, watching porn is a crime. The authorities use AI, which makes mistakes due to the limits of image recognition algorithms. They also employ many professional censors, known as jian huang shi or “porn appraisers”, who quickly grow tired. China’s cyberspace regulator announced in March 2022 that its “Qinglang” campaign deleted about 22 million items in 2021 and now also targets porn on livestreaming platforms. To combine the power of humans and AI, researchers at Beijing Jiaotong University have developed a ‘mind-reading’ device. Using the EEG cap, a jian huang shi only needed to sit in front of a screen. The paper lists an accuracy of about 80 percent with 15 male volunteers, and more training data would be needed to improve the performance.
China is clearly following this path. The PLA is funding development of future helmets that support a mind-reading brain-computer interface. Some factories use brain wave monitoring to track attention and emotions to prevent work accidents. More than a dozen Chinese companies are reportedly using the technology to monitor the emotions of workers in high-stress jobs.