Getting some serious Deus Ex vibes from China lately
Deus Ex is right again. They did this before with Eliza Cassan.
While a cool concept, I'm not sure it serves much purpose. I doubt news anchors' wage make for a significant part of news studios' expenses.
How does this function? Does it just read stuff?
leave it to asia to invent a slim, completely obediant, white woman that will never speak out of turn. This is actually even worse than their already ridiculous propaganda presenters
The main goal is provably to minimize any risk of dissent from the anchors. Not like China Xinhua/the PRC has to worry about the cost difference.
Coming from China one might infer a more devious motivation for it. Perhaps they see it as removing one more point of failure (a human news anchor) from the dissemination of state-approved news.
If you could fit a whole studio, with cameras, lighting, news anchors and all that just into a computer you would probably kill quite some jobs and save money.
Then again is probably for what the two before me wrote.
Modern China scares me, especially since nothing is really done about it. Articles about the newest technology innovations are regularly met with 1984 quotes (though Brave New World may be more appropriate), but that's about it. Then another article comes out, and the same thing happens. Rinse and repeat.
I think 1984 is more accurate Brave New World was not quite as dystopian or dark IMO.
Brave New World is a lot worse because the regime takes advantage of the pleasure centre of your brain - bombarding you with sex, drugs and pointless distractions. 1984's bleak, but the Victorianesque focus on chastity and puritanical asceticism offers an outlet for resistance, when BNW offers no easy channel to rebel. I think China fits part way down the middle, with XI Jingping's Confucianist ideology and the country's odd consumerist culture - you're surveilled and distracted by material possessions so you forget you're being oppressed.
I'd rather live on Soma than in China, but it's subjective I suppose. I'd be more inclined to agree with you if the resistance in 1984 was successful.
In a way, to me, Brave New Word is much scarier because 1984 seems scary from the beginning with its blatant themes of suppression, whereas BNW subtly reveals government oppression as it progresses i.e. through distraction in a world that seems essentially perfect on the surface. China adopts 1984's mass surveillance and thoughtcrime but wraps it in superficial economic success and 'ooh look at this fancy technology we have, but please don't pay attention to how we can exploit it', which I think resembles the soma drug in BNW. Perfection on the surface, exploitable at its core. Then again, I'd much prefer the fate of Bernard over the fate of Winston.
I've always wanted to write my own version of Animal Farm that, instead of focusing on the Soviet Union, shifts attention to the behaviour of China and how it presents itself as 'for the people!' on the surface but really has no desire to uphold rights. Classical dystopian novels in general are becoming outdated; their principles still apply, but they nowadays have growing holes in their story because of recent developments in technology and the political landscape.
"""AI""" in the biggest air quotes availible.
White woman? She looks pretty Asian to me.
They got a male one, too
https://twitter.com/XHNews/status/1098173090448629760?s=19
The uhhh... mouth movement and scale could use some tweaking
white as in the asian standard of beauty which is paler than a snowflake
So why use a robot I stead of cgi? Surely cgi would look less uncanny
Prestige I assume. A robot is a lot more impressive and "tangible" than just a regular CGI character.
If they went the CGI route, they would just end up with a significantly less adorable Chinese Kizuna Ai.
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