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High School in China Installs Facial Recognition Cameras To Monitor Students' Attentiveness (theepochtimes.com)
A high school in Hangzhou City, Zhejiang Province located on the eastern coast of China, has employed facial recognition technology to monitor students' attentiveness in class, local media reports. From the report: At Hangzhou Number 11 High School, three cameras at the front of the classroom scan students' faces every 30 seconds, analyzing their facial expressions to detect their mood, according to a May 16 report in the state-run newspaper The Paper. The different moods -- surprised, sad, antipathy, angry, happy, afraid, neutral -- are recorded and averaged during each class. A display screen, only visible to the teacher, shows the data in real-time. A certain value is determined as a student not paying enough attention. A video shot by Zhejiang Daily Press revealed that the system -- coined the "smart classroom behavior management system" by the school -- also analyzes students' actions, categorized into: reading, listening, writing, standing up, raising hands, and leaning on the desk.
the system also analyzes students' actions, categorized into: reading, listening, writing, standing up, raising hands, and leaning on the desk.
Soon to come: doodling, fomenting rebellion, gossiping, sleeping, reading non-class materials, and pranking.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
What if Chinese students turn out cleverer than the adults and adapt to show attentiveness and comprehension while secretly being out to lunch? Or worse, look on as if in rapt attention while secretly fantasizing about a world in which they don’t have to pretend they’re not bored when they’re bored, a world that does not, if you’ll forgive me, so closely resemble the Seventh Circle of Hell?
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
As usual, the best sci-fi writers were well ahead of this curve. The following is an exerpt from Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson in 1992:
Y.T.'s mom pulls up the new memo, checks the time, and starts reading it. The estimated reading time is 15.62 minutes. Later, when Marietta does her end-of-day statistical roundup, sitting in her private office at 9:00 P.M., she will see the name of each employee and next to it, the amount of time spent reading this memo, and her reaction, based on the time spent, will go something like this:
Less than 10 mm. Time for an employee conference and possible attitude counseling.
10-14 min. Keep an eye on this employee; may be developing slipshod attittide.
14-15.61 mm. Employee is an efficient worker, may sometimes miss important details.
Exactly 15.62 mm. Smartass. Needs attitude counseling.
15.63-16 mm. Asswipe. Not to be trusted.
16-18 mm. Employee is a methodical worker, may sometimes get hung up on minor details.
More than 18 mm. Check the security videotape, see just what this employee was up to (e.g., possible unauthorized restroom break).
Y.T.'s mom decides to spend between fourteen and fifteen minutes reading the memo. It's better for younger workers to spend too long, to show that they're careful, not cocky. It's better for older workers to go a little fast, to show good management potential. She's pushing forty. She scans through the memo, hitting the Page Down button at reasonably regular intervals, occasionally paging back up to pretend to reread some earlier section. The computer is going to notice all this. It approves of rereading. It's a small thing, but over a decade or so this stuff really shows up on your work-habits summary.
You've clearly never been to China.
Here, I can stereotype too. All Americans are fat, lazy and materialistic.
It's good that they specified which coast.
Or maybe it's just a tool to assist the teacher when they have to deal with a large class of kids. I'm not saying it isn't Orwellian, merely that perhaps it's not designed to force the kids to pay attention but rather to help the teacher notice where they need to focus their attention. Managing 30 kids who have to do boring work is hard.
I actually know some Chinese kids, and I've seen their school... It wasn't some kind of Party Loyalty factory, it was just a normal school full of normal kids but with more of a focus on rote learning than we have in the west.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC