[Music] so picture your life in a place where everything you do what you buy how you behave is tracked the government gives you a score and the score is a measure of how trustworthy you are as a citizen and determines what you're allowed to do like ever boarding a train getting a mortgage all goes back to this score it's called social credit it sounds like that show black mirror but it's actually happening in China so how does that change you does it change you what does your life look like when your every move is watched the system's eyes are in Big Data artificial intelligence and roughly 200 million surveillance cameras and that's totally fine with all young how you she's 21 graduated from a good school with solid grades she's diligent she's nice no surprise she's a 752 that's her rating with sesame credit a private company working with the government on the algorithms for the social credit system the scores go from 350 to 950 and are based on habits and behavior buy clothes or diapers it's good a lot of alcohol too many video games not so good how you 752 puts her in model citizen range and gets her discounts and privileges like using a shared bike without a deposit she likes it her friends do too they all have pretty high scores he said mechanism like pushes you to become a better citizen to build to build on the trust especially on the Chinese market because cuz you're you and you're not going to be punished if you haven't done anything wrong I think that's the point I think the system is working as a as a as a warning or a alert to like to push people to do it to be a good person and it's mandatory when it goes national social credit scores will be assigned to every one of China's citizens for life and what's weird so many people seem okay with it it's complicated but China went from extreme poverty to economic giant pretty quickly the credit history system didn't grow at the same pace so people would default on loans and get away with it adding scandals around fake food tainted baby milk and counterfeit goods and what if God is a big problem with trust so in 2014 the communist party called for a system to allow the trustworthy to roam everywhere under heaven while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step the model is a place called wrong Chung it's in Shandong Province its orderly streets are spotless cars slowed down which is unheard of in China words like honesty and credibility appear on propaganda posters display cases show pictures of wrong tones most honored citizens you start with a thousand points and you can print out your report any time you lose points for things like jaywalking littering tossing cigarette butts or spreading rumors cameras do a lot of the surveillance work but it's pretty analog - like posters that lists the ways you can gain or lose points and each night tip on local TV shows the surveillance highlights of the day crayola and then there's Joe I need she's an information collector a paid enforcer who walks around and writes down deeds about her neighbors I feel fortable like the man who carried a drunk person home things like this are good deals she said but the farmer overheard swearing and being rude yeah bad deed Maisy yes yeah her quota is ten a month woman she likes the work thinks the city's better for it okay the thing about the social credit system is that there isn't one single system not yet different places have different rules so what do you do if you have bad social credit well for one you talk about it on Weibo which is like Twitter there are forums for discredited people to vent and get advice in Chongqing we hooked up with Wang Wei Jun he had a business until he was sued by a client and Huang refused to pay 90 grand to settle it so the court put him on a social credit blacklist and things got WAY worse he explains that being blacklisted means he can't buy airplane or train tickets when he tries a message pops up saying he's discredited by the end of last year blacklisted people walked from 23 million flights and 5 million high speed train trips and the list goes on being discredited makes it hard to get a job alone a hotel room or put kids in certain schools then there's the public shaming photo galleries of blacklisted citizens there's even an app that shows who around you is in debt in China being monitored is nothing new but algorithmic surveillance makes it possible to collect data to build detailed profiles of people especially the ones not loyal to the government of all the video surveillance cameras on the planet right now nearly half of them are in China people bothered by privacy concerns so we think it's a lot of camera keep the safety is really good we're good things a lot of people we can accept it and cameras are getting smarter so the information that comes out for my image identifies that I'm female middle aged talks about whether wearing glasses the shape of my face AI is taking them next level they can do more than just see they actually understand who they're seeing so already people don't care about it but they put the technology in there's too much for example across the right eye that's not a very good how far off are we from needing to draw those red lines it's very hard to say I think maybe that case that could mean 10 years or 20 years 15 years maybe maybe that's not very long yeah it's coming it's coming it's coming [Music] how you isn't so bothered for Sesame scores high life is good and she's used to living most of it online soon her education and medical records and any run-ins with the law will factor into her social credit score and wherever she goes someone will follow and ask who pianist hey NBC News viewers thanks for checking out our YouTube channel subscribe by clicking on that button down here and click on any of the videos over here to watch the latest interviews show highlights and digital exclusives thanks for watching