Imagine: every action you take and every interaction you have all reduced to a single rating called a social credit score. A higher rating allows you to have better opportunities, while a low rating essentially keeps you shut off from the rest of society. This idea may be in our near future.
This idea is not too far-fetched when you think about how car insurance agencies utlitize data from a device you choose to plug into your car. The device monitors your driving in hopes of being rewarded with a better rate when you drive safely.
Every citizen would have a set score to start with that would be wholly affected going forward by the actions they take. Donating to a charity or voting would raise your score, while not exercising and smoking would lower your score. Reward and access for what society deems good behavior and punishment or lack of access for bad behavior. See how easily it would be to use your behaviors good or bad to evaluate your reliability?
This type of information about your behavior would then be used to move your social credit score higher or lower.
So, what would the restrictions to moving to a social credit score verses the consumer credit scores that are currently used today look like? Imagine a going to book a flight with an airline, only to discover that your social credit score is restricting you. You got a horrible review from your previous month’s taxi rides, so now you cannot book the flight because the airline is already aware of how bad of a customer you are. Scary but, at the same time, an interesting idea.
While a social credit score is entirely possible, I believe it would take a huge push of legislation to make it a fully functioning system. The vulnerabilities of the system that would monitor the social scores would need to be regulated. Putting all our futures in algorithms of developers would be subjecting ourselves to developer bias, false correlations and feedback loops.
The current algorithms proposed do not factor in ethical considerations. Our behaviors are prone to errors. One bad day of not following your rhythm of posting likes to social media or tipping your Starbucks barista could lead to false positives.
However, adopting some parts of a social credit score into the current consumer credit rating score may be in our near future. FICO, the industry standard for consumer credit since the 1950s, has in the last five years seen more marketplace lenders ditching the traditional scores for social credit score business models that analyze your behavior as a sign of creditworthiness.
China has a model that is already incorporating a consumer credit score with a social credit initiative. Their model uses a record system so businesses, individuals and government institutions can track and evaluate the trustworthiness of its citizens. The hope is the social score will help to regulated social behavior and promote traditional moral values of trustworthiness.
I believe the future of a social credit score will be slow moving in the United States. Over the next five to 10 years, we will start to see parts of a social score being incorporated by major lenders. However, it will be up to us as citizens to decide if the incorporation of parts of a social credit score will violate our right to privacy and dignity.
