At the beginning of his article Adam Conner-Simon claims that in any type of communication/relationships it is difficult to read someone else’s emotions. Can we trust facial expressions? Are they always accurate? Researches from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) came up with “EQ-Radio”, device which can detect individual’s emotions using wireless signal with 87% accuracy. But how does this device work? It measures subtle changes in heart beating and breathing and detects if person is sad, happy or angry. This device can be used in health care (which is the most important in my opinion ), entertainment or consumer behavior. If you are tired or/and stressed, smart homes system can “read” your mood and adjust the air temperature and suggest you to take a walk or drink some water. Project leader Dina Katabi believes that “our results could pave the way for future technologies that could help monitor and diagnose conditions like depression and anxiety”.
We all know that facial expressions are not reliable enough; on-body sensors like chest bands and ECG monitors are inconvenient to wear. So what does make EQ-Radio different and useful? EQ-Radio sends wireless signals that reflect signal from a person’s body and bring it to the device. It can help to find out the individual’s emotional level. “By recovering measurements of the heart valves opening and closing at a millisecond time-scale, this system can literally detect if someone’s heart skips a beat,” say researches. “This opens up the possibility of learning more about conditions like arrhythmia, and potentially exploring other medical applications that we haven’t even thought of yet.”
I am not very good at analyzing new technological devices, but EQ-Radio seems very useful for me, especially if it can help people with depression and other psychological problems. Adam Conner-Simons used enough evidences to make me believe that he exactly knows what he is talking about and we can trust his opinion:
- Analyzing previous studying and devises. For example, he mentioned Microsoft’s vision-based “Emotion API”, which focuses on facial expressions (he proved that this system is not accurate enough).
- Mentioning competent opinions.
- Scientific studies and experiments.
- Detailed descriptions of devise.
- Ideas on how this EQ-Radio can change the future.
Technology which was describe in Conner-Simon’s article, obviously, has a numerical representation: “New media object can be described formally (mathematically). For instance, an image or a shape can be described using a mathematical function” (Manovich 49). As far as I imagine, quantity of heartbeats and frequency of breathing can be only described using a mathematical function.
Transcoding? For sure. “Beginning with the basic, “material” principles of new media — numeric coding and modular organization — we moved to more “deep” and far reaching ones — automation and variability” (Manovich 63). Individual’s mood level is based on transcoding. For example, number 49 can mean that person is tired, yet upset. Again, this is my interpretation of this technology, which might be wrong.
At the end of “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” Alan Turing states: “We may hope that machines will eventually compete with men in all purely intellectual fields. But which are the best ones to start with? Even this is a difficult decision” (Turing 460). I do not think that machines should compete with human intelligence, because it might be dangerous. Technological devises should help us to improve our health, make our lives easier and many things (like space and time travelling) achievable. However, I think good ruler should have not only intelligence, but heart.
1) Do you find EQ-Radio useful in our society?
2) Do you want to read people’s emotions or you prefer to keep in unknown/private?
I think reading people’s emotions can really be an intrusion to privacy. But there are sometimes i wish i could read emotions especially over text messages. I think texting is a very low level form of communication only meant for information and not necessarily to convey emotions or having important conversations because a lot could be perceived differently from the intent of the conversation. This device could fix that issue but it depends if people want it to be known.
I’ve never heard of the EQ-Radio before but I do find the concept of the invention to be very interesting. To answer the question that you posed I actually do not think that this invention would be useful in our society. I don’t think emotions should be kept private but should be other methods of going about it instead of using this EQ-Radio.Because of the technological advances that we have been making people connect more with their media devices more than they do with each other. Even with the argument of using the device for health issues such as depression and anxiety having to hear advice from a radio will eventually become a source of depression itself. The one thing that I do think that the EQ-Radio would be good for is just as the video suggest to collect data about how people feel in reaction to certain things such as a movie. In this way we can have an understanding about people in general instead of trying to understand an individuals emotions and suggest methods of a cure for them.