Emotion Tracking & 'The Emotion Economy'

[John Shillington]

I started to read "We Know How You Feel" (http://nyr.kr/1Kj7OUO) with interest and a little excitement: computers are getting really good at reading emotions by looking at human faces. That's cool, and could have all kinds of good side effects! Pretty quickly my excitement cooled, then curdled, when I checked out the Affectiva site and video (http://www.affectiva.com). By the end of the article I felt like running for cover, and my enthusiasm for the Apple Watch had waned considerably. Check this out, for example:

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Not long ago, Verizon drafted plans for a media console packed with sensors, including a thermographic camera (to measure body temperature), an infrared laser (to gauge depth), and a multi-array microphone. By scanning a room, the system could determine the occupants’ age, gender, weight, height, skin color, hair length, facial features, mannerisms, what language they spoke, and whether they had an accent. It could identify pets, furniture, paintings, even a bag of chips. It could track “ambient actions”: eating, exercising, reading, sleeping, cuddling, cleaning, playing a musical instrument. It could probe other devices—to learn what a person might be browsing on the Web, or writing in an e-mail. It could scan for affect, tracking moments of laughter or argument. All this data would then shape the console’s choice of TV ads. A marital fight might prompt an ad for a counsellor. Signs of stress might prompt ads for aromatherapy candles. Upbeat humming might prompt ads “configured to target happy people.” The system could then broadcast the ads to every device in the room.

I had wondered if the Verizon system was an anomaly—perhaps dreamed up by overeager employees. But a number of its features are already available in Microsoft’s Xbox One system, which has a high-definition camera that can monitor players at thirty frames per second. Using a technology called Time of Flight, it can track the movement of individual photons, picking up minute alterations in a viewer’s skin color to measure blood flow, then calculate changes in heart rate. The software can monitor six people simultaneously, in visible or infrared light, charting their gaze and their basic emotional states, using technology similar to Affectiva’s. If people are moving, it can determine how much force their muscles are exerting. The system has tremendous potential for making digital games more immersive. But Microsoft has also been developing non-gaming applications, envisioning TV ads targeted to your emotions, and programming priced according to how many people are in the room. Google, Comcast, and Intel have moved in a similar direction. Two years ago, Erik Huggers, a vice-president of Intel Media, expressed a common dissatisfaction: “Today, television doesn’t really know anything about you.”

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Cool technology, disturbing applications.

John "Chicken Little" Shillington

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John Shillington

VP, Technology

Cybera Inc.

mobile: +1.780.700.2548

Cybera is a not-for-profit organization that works to spur and support innovation, for the economic benefit of Alberta, through the use of cyberinfrastructure.

[Jens Jensen]

Scary stuff! George Orwell was an optimist, with his two-way tv!  And then you only need to start merging the data with other datasets like your shopping or Internet browsing.

"it can track the movement of individual photons" - they probably meant persons?  AFAIK, to capture individual photons you either need some sort of cascade in a material where one photon releases more than one, or you need some sort of special magic as with the single photon quantum communication.

I wonder if there is an overlap with the tricorder stuff: http://tricorder.xprize.org/. These things are designed to be minimally intrusive (compared to the current state of having to go to a GP and have needles stuck into you) and learn a lot about you, but obviously a bit more physiological. But if your smart devices can track your well-being then healthcare might be the next step, beyond advertising. Good for you, isn't it.

After that, of course, someone will start using the technology to look for terrorists, in the interest of national security, of course; and then other miscreants, and then anti-war protesters, and then people who lie about their social security claims, and then people who fail to roll in their rubbish bins on the day of collection. Once it becomes easier to collect and control the data, the purpose tends to erode...

But, more seriously, for healthcare the challenge is to find a balance between intrusion and benign monitoring. Think of monitoring elderly people in their homes to make sure they are safe, but without intruding on their privacy (and without their feeling that their privacy is being violated). 

Cheers

-j