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5 million jobs in the UK are at “high risk” of being automated A quantum experiment suggests there’s no such thing as objective reality Microsoft just booted up the first “DNA drive” for storing data Watch two astronauts take a spacewalk to give the ISS a power upgrade These are some of the questions Affectiva, an emotion-sensing technology startup that spun out of the MIT Media Lab, is asking.
And the company says it has amassed a significant amount of data on driver behavior through a recent program, capturing everything from road rage to impromptu road-trip singalongs.
“[We want] holistic automotive AI systems that not only look outside the vehicle [.
but] also look inside the vehicle,” said Taniya Mishra, the company’s director of AI research, on stage at EmTech Digital, an event organized by MIT Technology Review.
“We want AI to know what is the mental and emotional state of people inside the car.
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create({ portalId: “4518541”, formId: “687d89a5-264a-492d-b504-be0d4c3640f2” }); Affectiva is running a program where it pays drivers to help train its emotional recognition system.
The company send drivers a kit including cameras and other sensors to place within their vehicles.
These record a person’s facial expressions, gestures, and tone of voice while they are on the road.
That data is then labeled by trained specialists for a range of emotions, and then fed into deep neural networks.
Through this approach, the team has been able to collect a rich source of naturalistic behavior and emotional data.
Drivers typically have an initial adjustment period of around one-and-a-half days during which they are self-conscious of being watched, but they quickly get used to it.
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The study has also helped the team deepen their understanding of different patterns in human emotion, such as how anger is typically expressed through both facial expressions and a raised voice while happiness is more often expressed through only facial expressions.
Emotion-recognition technology is still nascent, but it could be applied in a variety of ways beyond automotives.
Mishra mentioned, for example, that it could help autistic children like her three-year old to better socialize and engage with their peers.
It could also help humans engage in more meaningful collaborations with AI “to learn, to find enjoyment, and to do tasks together,” she said.
But such technology also raises important questions about privacy.
Many attendees at EmTech Digital expressed that the idea of having their car monitor their emotions is rather “creepy.
” Mishra also noted that Affectiva made a conscious decision not to use their technology for any kinds of security applications.
How to prevent those uses, however, remains an open-ended question as more and more players enter this space.
Mishra said it would be important for the tech industry, and society, to engage in open dialogue and discussion.
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