Affective Computing: Teaching Machines About Emotion

jbc writes "The L.A. Times is running a story about affective computing, a field in which researchers are programming computers to recognize human emotions through the use of such clues as facial expression, vocal tone, and blood pressure. Some hail it as the dawn of a new era in super-useful machines, while others warn about invasions of privacy."

Comments

Clippie v2

[peterdaly]

Clippie>> It looks like you are writing a letter.
You>>grr
Clippie>> You are frusterated, would you like my help?
You>>arrrg
Clippie>> I sense you need help, I have migrated your document into the letter template I think you want to you.
You>> stop!
Clippie>> Oh, you are done with your letter? Since you are having trouble, I have taken the liberty of saving and printing you letter for you.
You>> &*^@*(&#$_#(%*&
Clippie>> I sense how difficult this is for you, relax as I help you through the end of the letter writing process. Place an envelope in the printer to print the envelope to send you letter, that's all you have to do, see how easy this is?
...

I can't wait...

-Pete

If you're interested

[xmedar]

I'd suggest reading AffectiveComputing by Rosalind Picard from MIT Press, her homepage is here and interview on First Monday and the MIT homepage at MIT

affective?

[BlueFall]

I'd be happy with effective computing... ;)

Dating games, anyone?

[Dark Paladin]

This could be interesting for gamer types. Anyone ever play that current cop-shooting game, where the system has a body sensor that can tell if you're leaning/crouching so you can hide behind objects in a gun fight?

Now, take a dating sim like Sakura Taisen. Not only do you have to choose the right response to the question "Does this dress make me look fat?", but your facial response can have other effects.

For some games, this can be cool. Imagine an RPG where the look on your face determines your character's mood - and your response can then be read as humorous, sarcastic, serious, threatening - who knows. It will put real role playing on the computer into a new light, because you're doing more than reacting with the game, you're interacting.

Then again, the look on my face when I play FPS's look Quake is usually the same one I get when I'm sitting on the toilet, so that might not be a good thing....

MIT Media Lab Affective Computing Home Page

[Seth Finkelstein]

The MIT Media Lab has had a Affective Computing Research Group for a long time. Check out their home page at:

http://affect.media.mit.edu/AC_affect.html, and description

Affective computing is computing that relates to, arises from, or deliberately influences emotions. Our research focuses on creating personal computational systems endowed with the ability to sense, recognize and understand human emotions, together with the skills to respond in an intelligent, sensitive, and respectful manner toward the user and his/her emotions. We are also interested in the development of computers that aid in communicating human emotions, computers that assist and support people in development of their skills of social-emotional intelligence, and computers that "have" emotional mechanisms, as well as the intelligence and ethics to appropriately manage, express, and otherwise utilize these "emotions." Embracing the latter goal of "giving machines emotions" is perhaps the most controversial, and is based on a variety of scientific findings, which include indications that emotion plays a crucial role in enabling a resource-limited system to adapt intelligently to complex and unpredictable situations.

...

We understand that this research may involve gaining access to the emotional life of a person, including information that may be highly personal, intimate, and private. This work is inherently motivated by respect for human feelings, and therefore must respond with respect to a person's desire for privacy. Our default is to protect a person's privacy throughout our research, as well as in the tools we develop. We appreciate the potentially sensitive nature of our work, and feel strongly that the work we do adheres both to the highest ethical standards and the most fundamental human values. We made an effort to detail this policy.

Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)