China’s Social Credit Score is a Wrathful God
By: Andrew Garvey
Tags: Faith, Technology, Artificial Intelligence, Religion, China

Believe it or not, many self-identified Christians have their faith because they love God/the idea of God/creation itself/the data stream governing the functions and actions of the perceived and unseen Universe. Naturally, others have faith (or try to have it) out of a fear of hell or fear of not getting to heaven. In other words, the faithful do what they do because they either love the “big, bearded man in the sky” or they’re afraid of him and the idea of Him.

China’s social credit score system is a Chinese version of the big, bearded man in the sky, except that it’s a massive Artificial Intelligence in the cloud connected to Big Data and biometric databases with an established, proven capability for profound personal, social, and financial repercussions if a citizen breaks whatever rules and guidelines exist at that moment. Currently, journalists with connections to dissidents can be prevented from flying commercial or renting an apartment, along with numerous other punishments for their “antisocial” associations. Being the mother of an activist son lowers the mother’s social credit score, and being the daughter of a father convicted of fraud lowers the daughter’s social credit score. And let’s not speak of the repercussions of associating with homosexuals or the Muslim minority in China …

The Chinese version of the Sistine Chapel’s “bearded man in the sky” giving life to Adam also points the finger, both for the creation of order in a social heirarchy and to shame men and women publicly for their sins against the state and the state’s perception of order. Large digital billboards connected to face-and-stride recognition cameras in public places single out the individuals in crowds with low social credit scores, and that garners them jeers, taunts, and the physical radius of an untouchable. The “social credit score god” of China is a punishing one, a demonstrable god that knows and remembers everyone’s sins, and most in China obey it, not out of love, but out of fear and a logical protection of their own score at the expense of compassion.

Nothing is new under the sun. Christian faith in Europe and beyond was once (and often still is) based largely on fear. A cheating man huddling in a dark corner of a church silently making deals with God to forgive him his lustful transgressions is no uncommon sight to the leadership of cathedrals and churches throughout time. Terrified men have stumbled and quivered their way toward inevitable death during religious battles and wars across the centuries, not out of a love for God, but out of fear that their faults would send them to one of hell’s nine circles. Fear itself, while being a motivator to do less bad, is not a motivator to do well at doing good, and certainly not with the confidence of the assertively virtuous.

My friend on Chaffee County, Colorado’s search and rescue team recently helped save a former astronaut who had fallen down several hundred feet of an icy slope, breaking bones and needing an evac. She regularly helps rescue drowning kids and floundering drunks from the cold headwaters of the Arkansas river. Lost hikers, bicyclists with altitude sickness, and fishermen having heart attacks all need help, and she does it gracefully and well, not because she is Christian (she isn’t), but because her selfless nature compels her to help anyone in need, from astronauts to those gross meth people while she’s on call (and even when she isn’t but happens to be around).

Now imagine her being in China and not saving a drowning mother of five with a low social credit score because of her children’s multiple fathers. Interacting with that woman, spending time performing rescue breathing on her, and calling for additional help might lower my friend’s credit score. Because of her compassionate nature, I know she would still do the right thing, and I would be the weak one to cut her off as a friend because I wouldn’t want to lower my own “Trust Score” (Facebook’s and Apple’s current term for a new, different, and distinctly American version of China’s social credit score).

China wants to keep their families together (the fundamental time-tested force of social stability), so they’ve imposed an incredibly intelligent, wrathful, technological god on their 1.3 billion people that can undoubtedly identify the patterns, purchases, and locations of a cheating husband and lower his score. That god can record and downgrade the score of a child stealing gum and never forget it, even after his death far in the future. That god can punish the excesses of wives spending money frivolously to the detriment of their family’s financial well-being. That god is a scary and awesome power.

While it is certain that all in China believe in the evidence-based existence of China’s social credit score god, it’s doubtful that any Chinese people will ever do what that massive, interwoven series of surveillance programs and behavioral algorithms requires because of a love for it. It will never compel a Chinese individual to act out of a love for their neighbors. And mostly, that technological god of punishment and vengeance will never practically evoke a love for compassionate action towards those of a lesser caste.

The future must remember that people once existed who did good deeds for sinners, the sick, and the dying, no matter who they were, and they … we … performed those acts of kindness not out of a “supernatural” love, but out of a supremely natural love and compassion for the living — not artificial — creations of the world.