Canon installs AI smile-recognition cameras in Chinese offices. Only smiling workers are admitted.

Canon installed AI-powered smile-recognition cameras in the offices of its subsidiary Canon Information Technology in China. The Verge reports, citing the Financial Times.

The cameras allow entry into rooms or scheduling meetings only for smiling workers, guaranteeing that every employee is “100% happy”.

Nick Srnicek, an academic at University College London, said that algorithms and artificial intelligence do not replace workers but merely supplement management with their help.

“Technology accelerates the pace at which people work with machines, not the other way around, as happened during the Industrial Revolution in the eighteenth century,” the scientist says.

Canon Information Technology announced smile-recognition cameras in 2020 as part of a toolkit for managing the workplace.

The Financial Times report also contains other details on how Chinese companies monitor employees using AI and algorithms. According to the publication, firms monitor which programs workers use on their computers, measure lunch-break durations with video surveillance cameras, and track movements within the office via mobile apps.

In May 2021 it emerged that the Chinese government tested emotion-recognition systems on Uyghurs in police stations in Xinjiang.

In March Facebook blocked a group of hackers from China, who used the platform to surveil Uyghur journalists and activists.

In December 2020 the Chinese tech giant Alibaba acknowledged that its facial-recognition technology was used to identify the Uyghur minority in China.

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