A deificação chinesa? Os perigos e impactos do autoritarismo digital e do capitalismo de vigilância

Abstract

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has proven to be a vital aspect nowadays, especially given its political and economic relevance. Such being the case, the Chinese government has been working, since 2017, towards being the world leader in AI through the New Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan. This Chinese endeavour raises the question of what is the motivation behind this Chinese quest of developing and incorporating this technology by the state. Therefore, it is argued here that China incorporates AI in order to operationalise its data processing capacity as well to combine its omniscience and ubiquitous capacities to the state power to promote a “deification” to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and promote the state agenda, such as a bigger social control. Moreover, it is understood that both the AI incorporation as the assimilation of surveillance capitalism by China happens mainly through its public services and its surveillance system. Thus, this qualitative research utilizes the bibliographical review and study case methods in order to understand the socio-political impacts that the usage of AI by the Chinese digital authoritarianism regime causes, in the context of surveillance capitalism. It is identified that by using AI, China can overcome some social problems, such as the case in the health system, at the same time that it can cause other social-political issues, evident in the human rights violations in the Xinjiang province. It is concluded that China faces considerable challenges, such as the lack of articulation between the administrative bodies and the uneven implementation of IA in its territory, when it comes to utilising AI as means to engineering and controlling its society and also as a way to possibly deify the CCP.