China is using an AI 'mind reading' device to censor porn

A group of researchers in China have developed a 'mind reading' device that will be used to implement the nation's porn policies.

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China has developed an apparatus that is designed to detect porn and censor in through an artificial intelligence.

China is using an AI 'mind reading' device to censor porn 01

A team of researchers from the Beijing Jiaotong University in China have developed a new device that scans the brain of an individual that is moderating online content, and record the brain signals that are fired when the individual sees a piece of content that needs to be flagged for removal. As you can probably imagine, porn is banned in China and the nation already has widespread policies that removal large portions of content from its internet service.

China is heavily moderating its content through an artificial intelligence (AI) program, and while the AI is doing a lot of the heavy lifting some responsibilities still fall on humans. There is a position called a jian huang, or a "porn appraiser", which is essentially a content moderator specifically looking for pornographic images and video.

China is using an AI 'mind reading' device to censor porn 02

The team of researchers used their new helmet device on 15 male volunteers between the ages of 20-25 years, and according to the researchers the human brain was far better at detecting pornographic content than the AI system. However, the team claimed that the helmet showed it could detect any brain wave spike from the observer that was showed explicit content.

Furthermore the team claimed that the new helmet is capable of filtering out certain brainwaves spikes that may be caused by certain emotions or random thoughts. As for the helmets overall accuracy of filtering out explicit content based on brainwave signals, reports indicate that it it was approximately 80%.

The researchers attributed the helmets inconsistencies to the lack of accurate pornographic content showed the observers and the fact that all of the volunteers were male when most of the content moderators in this category are female.

In other China news, the nation's space agency recently made large claims about the Mars sample return space race.

Read more: Mars sample space race heats up after big claims come out of China

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Jak joined the TweakTown team in 2017 and has since reviewed 100s of new tech products and kept us informed daily on the latest science, space, and artificial intelligence news. Jak's love for science, space, and technology, and, more specifically, PC gaming, began at 10 years old. It was the day his dad showed him how to play Age of Empires on an old Compaq PC. Ever since that day, Jak fell in love with games and the progression of the technology industry in all its forms.

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