Concern 401 · Working draft · editorial review in progress
Social scoring systems
Social scoring combines information about people into broad ratings that can affect how they are treated across areas of life.
Understanding the concern
The concern is not every score used for a specific task. It is a rating that turns behaviour or personal characteristics into a judgement of general worth or trustworthiness, then carries consequences into unrelated settings. People may not know what was counted or how to correct it.
Imagine a school attendance record unexpectedly affecting access to an unrelated public service. Linking contexts can make a person feel that every action is being judged for unknown future consequences. The EU AI Act prohibits certain forms of social scoring; the exact conditions matter. Vague claims about one universal scoring system in a country can also mislead.
An example
A broad reputation score influences access to a service even though the underlying behaviour is unrelated to that service.
Illustrative unless identified as a documented case.
Words in plain English
- AI
- Software that learns patterns from examples or uses rules to perform tasks such as recognizing images or generating text. It can make mistakes and does not understand every situation as a person would.
- EU
- The European Union, a group of European countries with shared institutions and some shared laws.
Evidence and its limits
The European Commission describes a defined prohibition. This entry avoids claiming that all ratings or every country's systems operate in the same way.
European Commission AI Act Service Desk · Regulatory explainer
What Systems Are Prohibited under Article 5 of the AI Act? ↗ (opens in a new tab)Scoped prohibitions and exceptions, not a blanket worldwide ban on all recognition, scoring or monitoring.
Broader frameworks and background
These resources provide context. They do not establish every claim in this concern.
- OECD AI Principles (opens in a new tab)
framework
- NIST AI RMF (opens in a new tab)
framework
A question to discuss
Is each decision based on relevant evidence, or does a general score follow people into unrelated parts of life?
Keep track of different views, what needs checking, and any next step in your own discussion notes.
Open discussion notes →Principles for the conversation
Before you finish · reflect together
Virtues and principles to consider
Virtues are qualities we practice in how we treat people and make choices. They are not scores for judging someone. Use these ideas to explore what a thoughtful response could look like.
Dignity
Dignity means recognizing each person's worth regardless of usefulness, status, or a system's score. People deserve respect and a voice in matters that affect them.
Explain important decisions, avoid humiliating treatment, and keep room for a person's story. Do not treat a prediction as a complete account of who someone is.
Ask together: Does this use treat each person as someone whose experience matters?
Trustworthiness
Trustworthiness means giving people good reasons to rely on you. It grows when promises, actions, and evidence line up. With AI, a friendly voice or a famous brand is not enough: people need to know what was checked and what could still go wrong.
In practice, keep promises small enough to test, record mistakes, and tell people when the tool's limits affect them. If a service promises human review, make sure a person really has time and authority to review it.
Ask together: What would give the people affected a sound reason to trust this use?
Stewardship
Stewardship means caring for resources and systems that others depend on, including people who will use them later. It looks beyond the benefit of a quick launch.
Plan for maintenance, energy use, data protection, and eventual shutdown. Ask who will look after the tool when the original team moves on and how future users can avoid inheriting hidden costs.
Ask together: What are we responsible for caring for over time?
Editorial ratings
These are editorial judgments from the register, not measured probabilities or predictions about your situation.
About the register and scoring →More ways to explore
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