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Mood-Sensing Computer

Posted by michael on from the his-master's-voice dept.

handy_vandal writes "'A team at Vanderbilt University is ... developing a robotic assistant whose goal is .. [to] respond to the moods of its human master.' For use on the battlefield -- e.g. when a soldier is overcome with anxiety."

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  1. Everyone is "anxious" in combat by jayed_99 · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Or, if not anxious, you're FUCKING SCARED SHITLESS! (Or bored off of your ass, but that part isn't pertinent to the rest of my conversation).

    People that don't experience anxiety or fear in combat are either (a) too stupid to know better...which means they'll probably be dead soon or (b) are probably clinically insane.

    Now, don't get me wrong -- combat is the most intense adrenaline rush that you can possibly experience. It's the real-world version of "fight or flight" over and over and over again. Continuously...for hours and days and weeks. And for some people, that adrenaline rush is enjoyable and addictive. But, as an avowed adrenaline junkie, combat is an adrenaline overdose.

    There is a military axiom "Train as you intend to fight". Military training is intended to ingrain patterns of behavior that soldiers will fall back on when their capacity for rational thought has been eroded by the stresses of combat. (I will not digress into a discussion of how that training is mostly centered around "how to kill and survive" rather that "how to comply with the Geneva convention and related accords" -- though that might explain why every army has a history of military atrocities).

    A computer assistant -- to be effective in combat -- would have to "learn" its user in situations equivalent to combat. If it didn't, it wouldn't react the same in actual combat. And, I assure you, no training simulation comes close to approaching combat. The combination of "If I make a mistake I will die" and "I am actually killing a person" and "I could randomly die no matter what the fuck I do" is not something that can be realistically duplicated outside of the experience. I would also like to point out that soldiers do *not* respond well to "things outside of normal training parameters". The general inclination is to "shoot it" or "evade detection while trying to decide if I should shoot it".

    So what we have is (a) a computer program that has "learned" its user in situations less than combat (b) a soldier that has "learned" preset responses to external stimuli -- including the computer. If you throw the soldier+computer into combat, the computer doesn't know how to react anymore -- not correctly anyway -- because it's never "learned" about combat. The soldier will tend to listen to the computer because that's what he's been trained to do...but the computer is going to be offering suboptimal advice/help/whatever...because it doesn't "know" about combat.

    There's definitely roles for computers on the battlefield. Trying to provide stress-relief is probably not one of them. Certainly it's an interesting idea. And one day, it might be plausible. But, now, it's not too feasible. I think that computing will have to evolve quite a bit more before battlefield assistants that monitor emotional states and provide feedback based on that emotional state are truly a force multiplier.