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Emotionally Aware Apps That Respond To Feelings Are On the Horizon

Posted by samzenpus on from the turn-that-frown-upside-down dept.

bigwophh writes: Machine learning has helped a multitude of different technologies become a reality, including emotion-detection. Most examples to date have been rather simple, such as being able to detect a smile or a frown. But with today's super-fast computers, and even mobile devices, we're now able to detect emotion with far greater accuracy and nuance. Facial recognition expert Rana el Kaliouby recently gave a talk at TED to highlight just how accurate emotion-detection has become, and depending on your perspective, the result is either amazing, or downright scary. To accurately detect someone's emotion, Rana's software detects eight different factors, which include frowning, showing disgust, engaged, and raised eyebrows, among other things. Through research with this software, a couple of interesting factoids are revealed. In the United States, women are 40% more likely to smile than men. But the technology is ultimately destined for software that will detect the user's emotion and react accordingly.

4 of 49 comments (clear)

  1. Doesn't seem all that good by Gaygirlie · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You can clearly see that "smile" is fake, but the thingamabob happily accepts it as joyous smile. Now, if it could detect the frown on my face from seeing these stupid, fluff-piece spamticles, on the other hand...

  2. Not quite seeing the point by pushing-robot · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Outside of a conversational AI, I don't want my software to work differently depending on what mood it thinks I'm in. For every app that would actually benefit from this I foresee a hundred 'Clippy's.

    'You seem frustrated! Let's start a tutorial of my basic features...'
    'Hey—did you know you're angry? Here's some cute kittens that are sure to cheer you up!'
    'I can see you're really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over...'

    --
    How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
    1. Re:Not quite seeing the point by phantomfive · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Yes, I can see that if I had to work with any such app, I would quickly become angry, no matter what mood I was in to start with.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  3. I Wonder by WOOFYGOOFY · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I wonder if they'll be able to sense the level of contempt I have for them.

    Remember, these aren't "apps" as in applications you use to achieve some life goal. Like the click through TOSes that you agree to, these will be one-sided, spying malware which you can't say "no" to because on the other side will be resources society now expects you to know about or use, FB being the classic example of such malware.

    What tech companies have discovered is that the 20% of thoughtful, skeptical people in the population can be forced into submission by creating a world whose parameters and nature is defined by whatever the oblivious 80% will swallow, which is pretty much anything.