Well that's by far the scariest thing I've read all year. Mind you it is a centrally controlledm state without a faith influenced legal or social system. So pursuing a high social credit will be the 'Chinese Dream'. I wonder how the system will compensate for individuals damaged by poverty, drugs, broken homes, etc. Will they now be rigidly shunned by an entire social system and Paruty, rather than by casual discrimination. How do u rebuild your score when u are locked out of opportunities? At least under democracies the courts and NGOs can be used. Orwell would be patting himself on the back...

Mr. George Orwell is alive and well, though "they" are improving him. I will be 75 years old in 2030 so not too much problems for me but I fear for the humankind.

China is going to be so far beyond us, academically, we may never catch up. Our students care far more about social media, video games, and their smart phones than education.

During my 10 years in China, I occasionally asked my younger friends who were in college what they liked to do for fun. The answer: "We do not have fun. We are students. We only study".

“It has evolved continuously and become so complex, we no longer know for sure what it was thinking and how it made a judgment." It’s thinking how do I become master rather than servant.
I used to think 1984 x Skynet x Robocop = Doom. Now I just learned it = China! I wonder what the “social scores” are of the people who keep track of “social scores?” This is all just wrong on so many levels. It’s unnatural. The society is going to turn into automatons.

Wolfe: I'd rather be "locked out of opportunities" than locked in. I want no part of state opportunities. Their purpose is making good citizens, i.e., obedient servants of authority. This was openly stated by the early social engineers and nothing has changed because it worked so well.
Few question values instilled from childhood, e.g., the absolute necessity of total social control by an elite. Rulers have never had it so good. People don't need to be forced into the military anymore. They proudly kill and be killed on command. And this is accepted as honorable at home, or so we are told by mainstream media. How much has independent thought been replaced by propaganda? Is the political trend toward private enterprise or public service? Is the govt. growing or shrinking? These are indicators of the health of a society.

I think part of the US problem is nerd or brainiac is seen as a negative connotation. In China children who excel academically are extolled and praised. It is a great honour for a family. So yes, if your cultural signals have gone haywire then the determined culture will probably be your boss down the line. Although admittedly Chinese communism means any widespread 'culture' is artificial and not a good reflection of what it would be if not strictly controlled. :-)

In the US we are talking about no child left behind and gun shy about automation and the impact it will have on jobs. In China they are asking "haw far ahead can we get" and fully embracing autonomous manufacturing. One thing holding them back is the lack of respect for intellectual property means copying wins out over creating. This is why the US and China combined make for such a powerful economic force. They bring different complimentary skillsets to the table. As China gains wealth and wealthy companies they are starting to do more innovation and R&D and that should frighten the rest of the world because China is on track to gain a lot of power. People are streaming into the US and Europe to make better lives for themselves but they are yesterdays superpowers. Asia owns the future.

I wonder how much our educational system could improve if we put in a system similar to this, but without the State oversight and its connotations. Something like this might give authority-sensitive types an easier way to interact with the system, and give the teachers time to work with those students who _want_ to learn.
The AI would certainly be able to pick out the bullying types and see that they got behavioral training.
And it would allow those quicker students to bypass the slow classes and zoom ahead.
Yes, it would have to be carefully watched, making sure that folks in the system now didn't abuse the new data, or find new ways to abuse the kids. But anything which could help to re-engage kids in the learning process is a Good Thing(tm), right? So, it's both scary and smart. Let's figure out a way to make it work in our system, too.

@ljaques I think AI to monitor students is dystopian. As long as students perform it probably doesn't matter how they got there. I worked full time through school so I slept through many of my classes. My test grades were good and I outsourced a lot of my homework because I didn't see school as a meaningful accomplishment or find the curriculum interesting. I did well in college being able to major in something I had interest in by my overall HS GPA was terrible. Professionally I've been far more successful than the people I went to high school with who had much higher GPA's. It's well known for instance that humans can hear and think faster than speech so there is often no need to remain intently focused on what a lecturer is saying. It's well known that girls are better students on average than boys but do they make up most inventors, engineers, developers, and scientists too? Academic attentiveness isn't a useful enough predictor of future success to double down on it though cameras and behavior modification.