Week 7

Week 7 (16/18 March): Social Scoring

Lead: Team 5

Required Readings and Viewings (for everyone):

Response prompts:
The response prompts focus on the Chen and Cheung article, which will be the focus on the class meeting on 16 March. Post a response to the readings that does at least one of these options by 10:59pm on Sunday, March 14 (Team 1 and Team 3) or 5:59pm on Monday, 15 March (Team 2 and Team 4):

  1. Chen and Cheung bring up how loose legislation on data privacy is, do you believe China needs to solidify this legislation more and how can they do this?
  2. The concept of filial piety is brought up and how it affects one’s social credit score. Is it actually possible to gauge all citizens equally when it comes to this score?
  3. Sanctioning is discussed later in the article — are there ways which people could be negatively affected by such sanctioning illegitimately? Is this a good system?
  4. Horsley argues the “essence” of the social credit system is different than what Chen and Cheung describes. Which argument do you find more convincing and why?
  5. Respond to something in one of the readings that you found interesting or surprising.
  6. Identify something in one of the readings that you disagree with, and explain why.
  7. Respond constructively to something someone else posted.

Class Meetings

Lead by Team 5

Slides for Week 7 [PDF]

Blog Summary

Team 3

Group 5 led this week’s discussion on the topic of social credit, as exemplified by China’s growing social credit system (SCS). The SCS was launched in 2014 and aimed to assess the trustworthiness of Chinese citizens in meeting their contractual obligations.

Tuesday, 16 March

To open up Tuesday’s class, we participated in a game of Kahoot that was made in an effort to capture our classmates’ views on the concept of social scoring. Even though the class had various opinions on social scoring, most students had moderate views on the subject. This is most likely due to the fact that there are many ethical issues regarding social credit systems. Finally, the entire class agreed that extreme examples of social scoring, such as displaying a score on a social media profile, would be a breach of civil liberties.

Later in the class, we discussed how the Kahoot game had its own version of social scoring. Due to the fact that all of the answers in the Kahoot were correct, the evaluation of players was determined by the speed at which one answered the questions. This reiterated the concept of social scoring and added the additional factor of making it public, thereby incentivizing people to perform well, even though everyone knew there were not any incorrect answers.

We then focused the discussion on our interactions with credit score systems, specifically in the United States with the FICO credit scoring system. A common topic in the discussion was financial advice given to some of the students, by their parents. Some students’ parents advised them to begin establishing credit early and to use credit cards to make smaller purchases at places like the grocery store or gas station. Many also acknowledged that if their families did not have access to certain resources, like stable jobs and the opportunity to learn financial literacy, they would be less likely to have established credit early on. As a result, several students advocated for stronger financial literacy programs in public education.

The next set of discussion questions centered on whether businesses should be required to accept physical cash. This is a point of contention as buying goods with cash creates a level of anonymity and allows customers without good credit scores or without credit cards in general to purchase products. However, it is more difficult for businesses to conduct business in this manner. China differs from the United States with credit/social scoring as China monitors purchases made by a customer. These purchases may increase or decrease one’s social credit depending on what types of purchases the consumer is buying as described in the reading, Inside China’s Vast New Experiment in Social Ranking, written by Mara Hvistendahl.

A sanction is a threatened penalty for disobeying a law or rule, and sanctioning was briefly discussed regarding the SCS. Sanctions in the SCS include a lot of things such as being banned from traveling or even attending specific schools, which can negatively impact citizens’ social life and professional careers. Although the SCS is linked to a process of sanctions and rewards, we learned that the consequences of such sanctions are not always ethical. In groups, we discussed the possibility of China having stronger legislation and laws on data privacy as well, so that citizens do not feel pressured to do activities deemed “good” by society all of the time. Thus, to maintain civil freedoms in China, the government would need to loosen up on sanctions and solidify legislation on data privacy. We also discussed the topic of blacklisting and red-listing citizens and came to the conclusion that sanctions should not be irreversible and people with less serious offenses should be given a second chance.

This week’s required viewing was an episode titled [Nosedive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosedive_(Black_Mirror) from the television series Black Mirror. In this episode, the heavy reliance on the social credit system used in the society leads the protagonist on a journey that ends with her score dropping very rapidly in a short period of time, hence the title of the episode. For people who grew up in the US and were familiar with the basics of the credit system in the country, the episode seemed to progress naturally, if the social and credit scoring system were implemented to that extent. Societal views and implementation of the social scoring system in the countries of America and China vary. Additionally, a student in our discussion grew up in China and participated in the social credit system. He mentioned that the use of the social credit system really did not impact his day-to-day life. The most drastic control measures demonstrated in the Nosedive episode, such as not allowing someone to buy a plane ticket, was not something that he had experienced or witnessed inside of his social circle.

So, what are the ethical questions the social credit system creates? Some of the questions being raised during this discussion stemmed from the lack of transparency that companies have with their consumers about what components the credit score is composed of. Other issues brought up included privacy rights, and even social Darwinism as people would try to only associate themselves with others with high scores as a way to increase their own social status.

One important question that we failed to address in Tuesday’s class was whether these systems be allowed. Without a credit system, how do you establish trust between banks and their customers? The reasoning behind a credit system is to create a sense of trust that allows customers to borrow money when needed and to allow social mobility for social-based systems. Indeed, it is the spread of trusted credit records that have enabled a large fraction of the population to be able to obtain credit.

Thursday, 18 March

On Thursday, we opened with a poll that asked us to share how many hours we spend on social media daily and which forms of social media we use the most. Most people in the class averaged around two to three hours per day on many different types of social media. This included apps such as Discord, Twitter, Snapchat, Reddit, and TikTok. We were also quick to note that the nature of online schooling has essentially required everyone to spend most of their days in front of a computer or smartphone screen.

This then opened up the discussion of whether a social media platform can be designed to be engaging while remaining ethical. Most of us agreed that these companies are not incentivized to not actively drive engagement, since it is the source of their profits. We also discussed the idea of Instagram removing the visibility of the number of likes from posts, but we agreed that users would always just find another number to fixate on, like follower counts.

With the thought of incentives on our minds, we then turned to further discuss credit systems in both the U.S. and in China. These systems were created with the intent to promote good behavior thereby making society better as a whole. We discussed how these credit systems are already present in various forms in society. For example, Uber’s star system allows both passengers and drivers to rate each other. As several classmates noted, some of these systems are not easily reversible. However, all of the systems in the US, while not all-encompassing, signal value to others. For instance, a college degree from a prestigious university carries a positive value to others, while a poor review on Uber may signal to others that you are less trustworthy. Thus, these systems are already in our American society, just not to the extent that it is implemented in China.

We then turned our attention to a rebuttal of China’s social systems as being Orwellian. This was expanded upon in Horsley’s article, where the author discussed that China’s social credit systems were not as controlling as one may think. We then discussed the implications and the possibilities behind Horsley’s argument. Additionally, one student noted that while this currently may be the case, China is moving towards a much more controlled society than the article asserts.

The discussion then moved to the ethics of the CCP’s social credit system and multiple negative opinions of the system were given. Most notably, the ability of the CCP to use the social credit system to assist in the genocide of its Muslim population, as well as uses of the social credit system to undermine or reward those who the state deems “bad” and “good” respectively. One argument was brought up that the article written by Horsley might have been true at the time of her writing the article, which was in 2009. Since then, many things have changed in China, and the CCP has pushed the social credit system further. Again, we noted that due to global politics oftentimes the information that we glean from the media has been propagandized to fit a certain narrative. On the other hand, we also acknowledge that the CCP’s AI policies, especially with the social credit system, are being used in ways that multiple, oftentimes at odds with each other, like the US and Iran, countries and cultures have condoned.

We also discussed the ethical implications of getting loans through companies using algorithms to judge us based on various factors like a credit score even if it resembles the social scoring method in Nosedive. Everyone seemed to agree that the credit scoring process we have is reasonable and ethical because we know what is being factored into our score, it is not invasive to our privacy, and is not impacted by the people we surround ourselves with. Also, only certain entities can know our scores, like banks and employers. This differed from the system used in Nosedive as one’s social score was public to everyone.

As we wrapped up this week’s topic on social credit systems and the role that technology plays in these systems, we again discussed Black Mirror’s Nosedive episode and the parallels between real life, and the possible warnings the show was attempting to notify its viewers of. This included the impact of how social media can reflect societal value and the result of how instant gratification of viewing people created could create a potentially toxic feedback loop. The episode also demonstrated how easy it was to spiral from a good social status to a poor one due to external events.

Social credit systems and linking certain values and trustworthiness to numbers and algorithms has raised many important questions to consider as we prepare for our futures in the technology industry.