China’s Internet Censorship Regime Could Soon Include Mind-Reading Anti-Porn Helmets

Most of the time, China’s crushing, dystopian, inescapable surveillance/censorship apparatus is terrifying and deeply disturbing. On rare occasions, it’s merely amusing. This is one of those times and South China Morning Post has the details. (h/t The Honest Courtesan)

A device that can detect when a man is watching pornography by “reading his mind” has been developed in China, according to the research team in Beijing behind the project.

This lead in makes it sound as though every Chinese male will be issued a helmet and/or receive one up when signing up for internet service. And that would be kind of hilarious. But that’s more a UK thing — something to shore up the clogged porn filters the government still insists will save the empire from the scourge of sex stuff.

No, this helmet will be placed on the heads of internet censors, improving detection of porn before it reaches Chinese citizens.

The device, which could speed up the work of censors trying to spot indecent images on the Chinese internet, is worn on the head by the subject and can pick up a spike in the brainwaves triggered by explicit content, according to the researchers.

The problem this device aims to solve is humans and their inability to produce error-free work for hours on end while being compensated poorly. This will not end the long hours or the shitty pay. It will simply make China’s meatbags more efficient for longer periods of time. The porn-detecting helmet hopes to blend the best parts of regular and artificial intelligence to make China’s censors better, faster, and stronger. (But, strangely, not harder.)

Using the helmet, a jian huang shi only needed to sit in front of a screen, and the device would take over to screen a large number of photos non-stop until the censor blinked.

The developers said the new device could automatically adapt to the brainwaves of a human censor and could filter out noises in the brain signal caused by emotion, weariness or other thoughts.

Fun fact: jian huang shi means “porn appraiser.” Gentlemen, update your resumes. (Actually, women too.)

Many jian huang shi are women but no female volunteers took part in this programme, leaving unanswered the question of whether gender affects the device’s performance.

Which pretty much confirms common knowledge: men will wear whatever you tell them to as long as they’re assured they’ll get to see some skin.

Anti-porn helmets that detect porn better than the human eye. What China is pioneering will soon become an essential add-on for Oculus hardware. Reverse. Enhance. Etc. You read it here first.