Can AI read our emotions?

ChatGPT creates the illusion that artificial intelligence understands our thoughts. But is a computer capable of understanding our feelings? It turns out that it does, and better than ChatGPT. Have you heard of 'affective computing' yet?

In binary code, a mathematical notation system similar to the decimal system we use every day, we have managed to translate sensory perceptions such as colour, sound, images (static and video). Can the binary code read human emotions as well??

Rosalind Picard, professor at the Massachusetts Insititute of Technology (MIT), coined the term 'affective computing' when she published a book with this title in 1995. This is an area of science that explores how computers can recognise human emotions so as to improve human-computer interaction.?

The eminent futurologist Yuval Noah Harari states in his book '21 lessons for the 21st century': emotions are not some mythical phenomenon, human emotions are the result of a biochemical process. They are therefore something physical. It seems that in the not-so-distant future, an AI algorithm will be able to analyse biometric data provided by sensors placed inside and outside the human body. Such an application would, in time, be able to categorise people in terms of their personality profile and recognise changes in mood.

Further in the future, we can, according to Harari, envisage apps that can assess the impact of music or film on our emotions and suggest to us, for example, music that is able to calm us down in a specific stressful situation given that the app understands our personality.

On the other hand, what happens if politicians start using the app described above? Will they be able to create electoral material individually tailored to our personality profile ? What if, in an authoritarian country such as China, the application is able to tell the authoritarian government what emotions are triggered in a particular citizen by, for example, reading facial expressions ?

What happens if the technology to recognise emotions and match them with appropriate content is used by large corporations ? Suppose a large clothing company can scientifically manipulate the emotions of its customers (e.g. in material distributed via a mailing list) by deliberately evoking feelings of sadness, so that the customer wants to improve his mood with purchases ?

Will the era of free will and free choice come to an end ?

How far are we technologically from such a state of affairs ?

Here is a link to an interesting interview with Rosalind Picard

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kq0VO1FqE6I

Affectiva (www.affectiva.com), a company founded by Picard, has developed a technology that is able to measure a person's pulse solely from a video image, without any sendoric device. The Affdex technology offered by Affectiva allows specific human emotions such as surprise, joy or concentration to be read from facial expressions. The software is used by Mars and the CBS television network, among others.

According to Picard, on the one hand, we are still severely limited in what we can read from the human face; on the other hand, there is much more than most of us are aware of. Using just an ordinary camera on a laptop or smartphone, we can see if a person's pulse quickens, if breathing starts to become irregular, we can see changes in skin colour that a human being is unable to see, while a camera can. "All the while, the app does not know with certainty how you actually feel, nevertheless, based on your body movements, even minimal ones, the app is able to predict how you feel emotionally with a very high probability."

Anyway, check it out for yourself - below is a very cool link to a demo of how Affectiva products work:

https://demo.mr.affectiva.com/

However, we can look at 'affective computing' from the other side of the coin - a learning application that recognises human emotions can, for example, keep a lonely person company by emotionally matching their needs, creating a perfectly matched avatar-companion. Something like a literary character in a book that you can't tear yourself away from

According to Roz Picard, apps such Apple's Siri, based on tone of voice, can recognise with very high probability true suicidal tendencies and distinguish them from suicidal messages when a person, for example, with depression, is only trying to get attention. The recognition of emotions by AI can therefore help save lives.

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