Wrists and ankles strapped into a restraining “tiger chair,” a man is used as a subject with which to “train” artificial intelligence-assisted facial recognition technology to detect states of emotion. Minute changes in facial expression are analyzed by the facial recognition technology to determine whether the test subject possesses a “negative mindset” or a heightened state of anxiety, allegedly indicating a potential for anti-social behavior. This is not a vision from a dystopic television series. On the contrary, this is a lived reality in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in the far north-west of China, where the Chinese state, in … Continue reading Turning Ghosts into Humans: Surveillance as an Instrument of Social Engineering in Xinjiang