Why emotion recognition AI can’t reveal how we feel
New research exposes the flaws in emotion recognition
Method acting
The researchers used professional actors because they have a “functional expertise” in emotion: their success depends on them authentically portraying a character’s feelings.
The actors were photographed performing detailed, emotion-evoking scenarios. For example, “He is a motorcycle dude coming out of a biker bar just as a guy in a Porsche backs into his gleaming Harley” and “She is confronting her lover, who has rejected her, and his wife as they come out of a restaurant.”
The scenarios were evaluated in two separate studies. In the first, 839 volunteers rated the extent to which the scenario descriptions alone evoked one of 13 emotions: amusement, anger, awe, contempt, disgust, embarrassment, fear, happiness, interest, pride, sadness, shame, and surprise.
Next, the researchers used the median rating of each scenario to classify them into 13 categories of emotion.
The team then used machine learning to analyze how the actors portrayed these emotions in the photos.
This revealed that the actors used different facial gestures to portray the same categories of emotions. It also showed that similar facial poses didn’t reliably express the same emotional category.
Strike a pose
The team then asked additional groups of volunteers to assess the emotional meaning of each facial pose alone.
They found that the judgments of the poses alone didn’t reliably match the ratings of the facial expressions when they were viewed alongside the scenarios.
Barrett said this shows the importance of context in our assessments of facial expressions:
The study illustrates the enormous variability in how we express our emotions. It also further justifies theconcerns around emotion recognition AI, which is already used inrecruitment,law enforcement, andeducation,
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Story byThomas Macaulay
Thomas is a senior reporter at TNW. He covers European tech, with a focus on AI, cybersecurity, and government policy.Thomas is a senior reporter at TNW. He covers European tech, with a focus on AI, cybersecurity, and government policy.
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