AI Facial-Recognition Software in China: Ethical Implications beyond Political Economy

By the 2020s, the Chinese government had made significant advances in applying computer technology to garden-variety surveillance. To do so, that government relied to a significant extent on Chinese companies, and this in turn encouraged innovation at those companies even for non-governmental applications. I contend that treating this as a case study in business and government, without bringing in the ethical and political implications is a mistake. The ostensive “objectivity” of empirical social science may seem like an objective for scholars, but I submit that bringing in political and ethical theory renders the analysis superior to that which political economy alone can provide.

David Yang, who teaches economics at Harvard, spoke on a panel on China on October 11, 2024 on why some Chinese companies were developing AI technology even though generally technological development tends to go on in democracies rather than dictatorships. The reason for the exception, he said, is that the Chinese government had been buying facial-recognition software from companies in order to improve surveillance of the Chinese. Ignoring the unsavory ethical implications of a more totalitarian surveillance, Yang characterized the relationship between the businesses and the government as a win-win. The purchases by the government gives the companies the financial incentive and wherewithal to innovate AI for other, purely commercial purposes, and the government can more easily “restore order locally from social unrest.” Characterizing political protests as unrest can be said to be taken from an autocrat’s handbook, which unfairly casts a negative glow on what in a democracy is seen as healthy. Omitting the ethical implications from relations between business and government generally is thus partial both with respect to wholeness or completeness and in the sense of being biased. Even though Yang tried to present the relationship between the Chinese companies working on facial-recognition and the Chinese government buying the finished products objectively, his omission of the ethical dimension resulted in an incomplete explanation and a pro-autocratic bias. Even though such a bias could be said to be in sync with Harvard’s police-state, the hegemony of social order as the top value in political theory is problematic.

To be sure, social value could come with a government’s use of facial-recognition AI technology. Dave Davies, an American journalist who ventured inside China’s “surveillance state,” has argued that the Chinese Communist Party was “trying to internalize control. . . . Once you believe its true, it’s like you don’t even need the policeman at the corner anymore, because you’re becoming your own policeman.”[1] Once we shift from political protests to criminal activity, it is easier for even a democrat to see the value in prompting people to police themselves so a visible police-state apparatus in public would not be as likely. This is the antithesis of the “invisible man” question: What would you do that is illegal were you invisible so no one would see you and you wouldn’t get caught?  Instead, we can ask: What wouldn’t you do that you otherwise would do if you thought odds were high that you would get caught by police using facial-recognition AI technology?

But even with this internalization of control within an individual, which admittedly does not reach the individual not wanting to steal or injure someone in some way, the loss of privacy in public can be reckoned as an ethical (i.e., undeserved) harm that outweighs the ethical benefit of internalized control. Ben Franklin, one of the founding fathers of the United States, famously said that people who would trade privacy for more security deserve neither liberty nor safety. Of course, liberty is severely repressed in a dictatorship, and such a government can freely reduce people’s privacy with impunity in getting carried away with adding security measures. Ironically, such action by a pseudo-government can be observed at major universities in the States, including at Yale and Harvard, whose police departments do not have democratic legitimacy because the U.S. Constitution gives the police power to the state and federal governments rather than to even very wealthy private (“non-profit”) organizations.  

Whether in the United States or China, a republic (of republics) or an autocracy (or dictatorship), the human instinctual urge for still more control can manifest so easily in a sliding slope towards an excessively visible (and invisible), and thus impinging, police-state. The mind’s judgment concerning whether it has gone too far in this regard is susceptible to distorting itself or even suspending itself due to the allure of the pleasure of increasing control in a geographical area (or organization). In short, control is not easily internalized in people in whose discretion security measures lie. It is ironic that the internalization of control is easier when applied to individuals being controlled. An external check on the minds of the controllers is thus strongly advisable, lest we do not all wake up one day in a world in which we are surrounded by manifestations of passive-aggression and even unaccountable police brutality by people drunk with power from having the legal right to use lethal weapons. Cameras in public places are certainly superior to an overwhelming visible police presence in public places (and universities whose atmospheres are at least in principle academic in nature), but even with the ethical and practical value of internalized control, the unethical costs in terms of invasion of privacy should not be minimized or ignored outright. Achieving a policy that is balanced may not be easy, but I suspect it is best.

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1. Dave Davies, “Facial Recognition and Beyond: Journalist Ventures Inside China’s ‘Surveillance State’,” NPR.org, January 5, 2021.

On the Ethics of AI

In June, 2024 at the international political meeting of the G7, a group of seven industrial nations, the head of the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Francis, spoke on the ethical dimension of artificial intelligence, or machine-learning. Regarding what the Pope called the “techno-human condition,” machines capable of AI are yet another manifestation of human propensity, which our species has had since its inception, to use tools to mediate with the environment. Although tools can be thought of as an extension of our arms ad legs, it is important to distinguish the human from the machine, even as we posit human characteristics onto some advanced machines, such as computers. In the film, 2001, the computer Hal sounds human, and may even seem to have human motivations, but any such attributions come to an abrupt end when Hal is shut down. To say that Hal dies is to commit a basic category mistake. It would be absurd, for example, to claim that Hal has an after-life. So too, I submit, is there a category mistake in taking the Pope’s talk on the ethics of AI as being religious in nature. Just as it is easy to imprint the human mind on a machine-learning computer, it can be tempting to superimpose the religious domain onto another. The Pope overreached in arbitrarily bringing in religious garb on what is actually an ethical matter in the “techno-human” world.

The full essay is at "The Pope on AI."

Commercial Breaks on TV: Antiquated or Here to Stay?

By the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, the impact of computer technology on television was already promising to be nothing short of revolutionary. Yet people seemed only able to grasp the contours of an upcoming basic shift both in how television would come to be delivered and how programming would be financed and presented. Young adults were on the leading crest of the wave. Even by 2012, they typically watched television programming from laptops and even ipads rather than television sets. Meanwhile, an older demographic was learning how to integrate television screens with the internet such that movies could be downloaded on a laptop and shown on a larger screen, completely bypassing commercial television even stored on “tibo” from interlarding the home.

Being somewhat slow, to say the least, in picking up on computer technology, I was afforded a hint in 2012 of what the new technology portended for television as my viewership dwindled down to PBS, movies on dvds, and television news from abroad available on the internet.  Even after just a few years of this new commercial-less habit, I found the occasional television movie with commercials on TNT and TBS to be rather unpalatable on account of all the commercial breaks. Just a few years earlier, I would have thought nothing of the interruptions. They were as though blinks to eyes. The human brain has an amazing ability to “ignore” the banal if it is taken as a given rather than contingent. It is the shift from “necessary” to “contingent” that the advent of computer technology had already by the second decade of the twenty-first century begun to “awaken” in human consciousness regarding television commercial-breaks. That a perceptual change, if shared by many, could impact society so tremendously in terms of changed mores is the real story here.

In my own experience, watching episodes of Downton Abbey on PBS uninterrupted by commercials for up to two hours at a time afforded me a new viewing experience regarding a television serial beginning in 2010. By the last few episodes of the third season, it had dawned on me that by being so ensconced for an uninterrupted hour or even two in the audio-visual story-world of Downton,  I could really get into that world of the story precisely because my perception of it was sustained. This experience, as well as that of Game of Thrones, gave me a new sense of how full the experience of story-telling can be. That is, being absorbed in a story world a lot and especially without interruption can enable a viewer to really "get into" that world as an assumed context for the narrative. From such a basis, the viewer can more fully appreciate the depth of characterization such as the case in Downton Abbey, whether it be Mr. Carson’s struggles with early twentieth-century “modernity” or granny’s Machiavellian nature, which is not so dark because it is for the good of the family. Moreover, a sustained experience of a fine manner of speaking and of manners can make an impression on a viewer’s own manner. Abstractly put, a more complete and richer experience of story-telling is afforded by the viewer being in the story-world as per a sustained perceptual experience. Returning from such an experience to a “chopped up” movie shown on commercial television, one is apt to find a new impatience with the commercial breaks. Were there really this many before? They are ruining the movie.  The flight away from commercial television has undoubtedly been facilitated as a result. In effect, the new experience had already made the old one obsolete even if the networks had not yet reached this insight.

If my experience of shifting from commercial to non-commercial television and dvds is any indication, the further decline in viewership could make commercial television networks even more desperate for quick-cash programming, such as the low-class American “talk shows” and “reality shows” that make such excellent fodder for weight-loss commercials (yes, “ouch”). The perpetuation of this strategy would only facilitate the flight of the more discerning viewers to less unseemly programming that is available at alternatives to commercial television and even the television set. As commercial-television viewership continues to decline, more pressure to add even more commercials for the networks to break even would mean even more “cheap” programming and more “chopping up” of shows and movies with commercial breaks. More people would be just fine passing on cable or satellite altogether and leaving the television set “unconnected.”

As a result, the role of the television set in the typical house or apartment would change fundamentally, including even how it is perceived. The device would go from something that is always on to something that is only used occasionally and for certain purposes, such as to play a dvd or serve as a larger computer screen for internet or movies. There was a time when I would have freaked out had my television set not been able to receive any channels. I remember the sense of panic when a storm would knock out cable. I’m cut off from the outside world! Even as early as 2013, however, I had become just fine with the “box” being left unconnected. I didn’t even bother hooking up my digital box. I had come to perceive the televsion as something that is to be used with my dvd player. I watched Downton Abbey simply by clicking “watch online” at PBS on my laptop. I felt no desire to watch anything on commercial television. Why go through the motions to be connected? Maybe keeping the home a little less connected is not such a bad thing after all.

Viewing the television set as a device to be occasionally used to play a downloaded movie or dvd would mean no longer seeing the set as something that is to be almost always on or even necessarily hooked up to receive broadcast channels. The addiction to constancy can thus perhaps be broken, if only in terms of television. In a sense, the transformation dimly anticipated even as early as 2013 would be one of increasing quiet, and thus privacy in the home as the outside world that is admitted is more closely narrowed to particular story-worlds of interest, absent exogenous “messages” and even programming.

The change being advanced can be viewed as rather positive in nature. Ironically, removing from the television set its constant airing of programming could return the home to its pre-television quietude. Moreover, the addiction to constancy—such as in constantly smoking or constantly having the television on—may come to be viewed as a distinctly twentieth-century cultural phenomenon. Put another way, activities that in other eras would have been indulged in occasionally may in the context of the twentieth century have fed an addiction to constancy—an almost-obsessive desire to keep doing something notwithstanding the decline in its marginal utility. Often the activity or product constant in use is rather insignificant, and thus easily hackneyed into daily use. Rather than viewing a drink or cigarette as indulged in occasionally for social occasions, “cocktail hour” and “a cigarette with coffee in the morning” (and, indeed, having a coffee every morning) were allowed to become part of the popular culture in the twentieth century, at least in America. The resulting dire health impacts should have given people a hint that items geared by their nature to occasional use at best were part of a compulsive desire for constancy. The regular or even constant use of such banal items overstates their significance.

Although not having the health downside of nicotine or caffeine, television too had come by the 1970s to a constancy not justified by the underlying significance of the programming. “Being connected” meant always having the TV on in one’s house, even if this meant giving up too much control over what enters one’s home (e.g., commercials). The “being connected” to the outside world we allowed to become a constancy. Silence eclipsing the “white noise” was as though tantamount to succumbing unconditionally to a void of existential emptiness. How strange this fear would have sounded to a person living in the Victorian world before even phonographs and telephones, not to mention radios and televisions.

If one had looked to the future from 2012 or even further back in 2010, the question might have been whether computers would come to be sucked into the illusion of constancy-as-fullness, essentially replacing the television set as hegemon in the house. Already by 2013, smartphones and ipods had become the new means for constant connectivity (especially for young adults). Is this sort of constant communication really a deterrent to the sort of boredom that comes with an empty sense of being? Ironically, might there be more fullness of being were stillness or quiet to return as the default in the home? Perhaps a hypertrophic desire to constantly be connected externally undercuts one’s connectivity to oneself and one’s family. Severing the television cable permits an opportunity. The question is perhaps whether we moderns have the stamina to tolerate the resulting sense of void in our homes without instinctively filling it with another means of constant connectivity. Put another way, might the twentieth century household be remembered as an aberration rather than as the beginning of the modern world come into our living rooms? At the very least, the eclipse of commercial television means more control for the viewer in terms of what is admitted into the home.

Efficiency and Ethics: On the Fairness of High-Speed Trading

Two months into 2012, the SEC announced that it had been examining the trading activities of high-frequency trading firms.  According to the Wall Street Journal, the SEC was “examining, among other things, whether high-frequency firms benefit from delays in the dissemination of prices from various corners of the markets. . . . High-speed firms use direct feeds from exchanges that can give them a leg up on slower traders.” High-frequency traders “can access prices a split second faster through their access to direct feeds.” This is accomplished by placing the trading computers in the same data center that houses the exchange’s computer servers. Just over a year later, the Wall Street Journal reported that high-speed traders were using “a hidden facet” of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange’s computer system “to trade on the direction of the futures market before other investors get the same information.” Even getting the confirmation of a high-speed trade just one to ten milliseconds faster can enable a computer to know the direction a commodity is going and trade on it. According to the Wall Street Journal, the “ability to exploit such small time-gaps raises questions about transparency and fairness amid the computer-driven, rapid-fire trading that increasingly grips Wall Street and confounds regulators.” Both the increasing use of high-speed trading and the problem of accountability from a regulatory point of view raise the stakes in determining the ethics of the practice. 

Has the increasing role of high-speed trading rendered the individual investor a "second-class citizen" in the stock market?

The full essay is in Cases of Unethical Business, available in print and as an ebook at Amazon.com.  

On Television’s Sunset: Thinking outside the Box

Sometimes I think the human mind is like a train in being limited to the tracks that have already been laid. We are habituated to think it sufficient that we can turn off the main line on to another at the next signal. We think this is change because it involves turning onto a different track, but is it really change if the train is still on track?

A while back, someone thinking outside the box suggested  to me that because many watches and clocks were already computerized as of 2012, we could have sunrise pegged at 7am and sunset at 7pm every day of the year. The number of seconds in a minute would be adjusted accordingly. During the winter, a minute during daylight would have less than sixty seconds and a minute at night would have more. During summer, it would be the reverse. The inventive mind behind this idea was trying to obviate the problems involved with when to go on and off daylight savings time. As it stood in 2012 in the United States, the two dates were not symmetrical with regard to the amount of daylight (going on daylight savings time during the second week in February would match the first week of November). Of course, there is nothing magical about 7, except perhaps in Judaism. Under the inventive scheme, the time of sunset could be extended even to 10pm during the summer (each minute during daylight would have less than sixty seconds), going back to 7pm during the fall, winter and early spring.

Besides the fact that time itself does not change, at least as experienced by us, one problem with “fixing” the times of sunrise and sunset as envisioned by the inventive mind is, as one critic said, “the power of television.” We are habituated to TV Guide, and thus would not want to see 60 Minutes scheduled for fifty minutes one week in one season and seventy-five in another season. Being of a certain length of time, a given television show would be scheduled for different durations, as per the number of seconds in a minute. “Television would never stand for that,” so said one detractor. Absolving myself of responsibility, I replied, “It was all his idea, not mine.” Even though I thought of the idea as a thought experiment having value in stretching the human mind beyond the existing tracks, it occurred to me that the assumption that television has too much power is too narrow. The thought experiment can have value in getting us off the tracks (rather than off track) of our usual way of circumscribed thinking.

 Larry King, formerly of CNN, embraced online programming.      CNN

On March 12, 2012, Ora.tv was announced. Financed by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim Helú and co-founded by Larry King of New York, the planned internet television network “will have a slate of television shows of varying lengths and will stream them via the Internet to computers, phones, and television sets . . . by bypassing traditional television distribution systems."[1] Viewable on laptops, ipods, ipads, and smartphones, “television” shows could bypass the overpriced cable systems.

Even without Ora.tv, TV Guide was being relegated by the existence of video on demand, available on a laptop, ipad, or phone. Beyond video on demand, Ora.tv could only have an “irregular” schedule, given the differing lengths of the various programs. Having programs taped at varying lengths, it would not matter how long they run in real time even if there is a schedule (i.e., were the number of seconds in a minute changed so sunset would occur at 7pm year-round). So much for the power of television.

As early as 2010, people had told me they had disconnected their cable and were using their television screens to watch movies on DVD from Netflix or an already-antiquated video store. Television programs, like that which Larry King had on CNN and was planning for Ora.tv in 2012, do not benefit from a big screen as much as does a film like Avatar or Titanic. Hence Larry decided to discontinue his series of specials at CNN so he could turn to the internet venture that he had co-founded. Regarding his decision to depart CNN, King said, “When the train gets to the last station, you know to get off.”

What if technological change itself can outstrip even going onto another existing track? What if we have reached the last station with tracks? Might the human mind be able to travel trackless? Absent a way to rid Earth of its tilt, we are stuck with changing lengths of daylight. I mention proposal as a thought experiment to show how unnecessarily limited our way of thinking typically is (e.g., “television would never allow it.”). The context or paradigm itself can be thought of as variable in nature, rather than static. The human mind can indeed think up changes within a paradigm while simultaneously shifting the paradigm itself. We need not think only in terms of whether to shift the track ahead. Remember the train in one of the Back to the Future films taking off from the track? The human mind can do likewise, if we do not hold ourselves back out of sheer habit. We have only ourselves to blame if we don’t start thinking outside the box, or over yonder from the rusty tracks. It might be that the twenty-first century will be known as the century when weeds started growing through the tracks. We have only ourselves holding us back from getting off track.

1. Brian Stelter, “New Internet TV Network to Feature Larry King,” The New York Times, March 12, 2012.