AI Continues To Fail At Reading Emotions
March 9, 2021
Once computers can finally and correctly read emotions, its applications will be endless and its inventors will be as rich as Bill Gates. AI still has a long way to go before technology accurately reads emotions. Medium OneZero explains, “The Shoddy Science Behind Emotional Recognition Tech.”
Companies around the world are already touting emotion recognition technology for real world use, but most of the science behind the technology is bunk. Senior Principal Researcher at Microsoft Researcher and co-founder of the AI Now Institute stressed how emotion recognition science is not conclusive.
Most emotion recognition software is built around psychologist Paul Ekman’s “seven universal emotions” theory.
“A meta-review of 1,000 studies found that the science tying our facial expressions to our emotions isn’t entirely universal. People make the expected facial expression to match their emotional state only 20% to 30% of the time, the researchers said.
But this technology is still being pushed on those who don’t have the power to refuse it. Children in virtual classrooms, job candidates performing virtual interviews, Amazon workers with cameras on them while they deliver packages, and even on people being questioned by police.”
It sounds like emotion recognition software could become the new lie detector. Lie detectors use pseudo-science, even its inventor regretted the machine, to determine if a person tells falsehoods. Thankfully lie detector results are not admissible in court, but law enforcement officials and lawyers still rely on them. Emotion recognition software could be admissible in court until the science is proven wrong. How many innocent people, students, job candidates, etc., will be effected?
Whitney Grace, March 9, 2021
Comments
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
