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Can Facial Expressions Designate Presence Info?
from the seems-tricky dept
There are some customer support phone systems these days that claim they can recognize if someone is angry or raising their voice (or simply cursing at the hold music) -- but that's only the tip of the iceberg for having more advanced systems recognize your state. For many years, people have talked about how "presence" was going to change everything. If you could somehow let your computer know if you were busy or tired or free or whatever, perhaps it could help better prioritize everything that might interrupt you. While things like instant messenger do have some amount of presence information built in -- it's still mostly reliant on the user setting things (or noticing that you haven't done anything for a while and setting you to "idle"). However, there's been a lot of research done over the years about having computers and phones better recognize when you can and can't answer a call. Of course, it's quite a difficult problem -- and some new researchers are tackling a related issue by trying to teach a computer system to recognize what your facial expression means. Rather than using this system to keep you from being bothered when you're in a pissed off mood, though, it sounds like they're looking to pitch you depression medication when you're feeling down. Forget behavioral advertising, it's time for emotionally targeted advertising. However, they are looking at some additional applications, such as having a camera that monitors your face while you drive and tries to keep you alert if your face starts to appear bored. Of course, last time we heard about a similar plan from IBM -- about five years ago -- the system was supposed to tell you jokes and squirt water on your face (yes, you would have an automated Bozo the Clown riding shotgun). It's not clear that much has really changed over the years -- as these projects always seem to be continually in the future.
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Useful in ER rooms?
Since all ER patients get those wrist bracelets now anyway, how about a detector that detects the warning signs for violent patients? Even "calm" patients could become violent if they are made to wait for 5 hours.
p.s. the toe bone was fine.
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Unreliable data
The mind is much more disconnected and independent from physiology than many believe. Our bodies make many actions based on conscious or subconscious processes yield no relevant or useful information to an observer, in fact they can be entirely misleading.
You should study "The lie behind the lie detector" and the long term statistical evaluation of FACS pertaining to the discredited practices of polygraphy and facial expression decoding, which many law enforcement people have studied and realised are largely useless in practice outside a statistical laboratory based experimental setting.
That doesn't mean ALL physiometric data is useless to decoding internal states, just not precise cognitive/emotional states. A car steering system which monitors whether the driver seems tired is a great example of a technology that can work with great accuracy, since tiredness is a global parameter of the organism reflected in rection times and so on.
btw, I broke a toe once so you got my sympathy - people take the piss because it's "just a little toe", but I've been in many scrapes, blown up, electrified, thrown out of moving vehicles and I tell you nothing ever hurt as bad as that toe did.
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Re: Unreliable data
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I remember once while working in very small hotel in London, and at the same time there were workers from Portugal who when they chatted amongest themselves...to us, it seemd that they were arguing...but they weren't...it was just their way of stating their points.
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VERY tricky!
Oh, think that pinky toe hurt? Try a kidney stone my friends! Many women have likened it to child birth.
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could be annoying
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Re: VERY tricky!
Yea sorry, no contribution to the discussion.
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Why not...
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Why
I will shut it off. If I am at work and I am tired.. there is the coffee pot that lurks not so far away.
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Long term Dependancy & Inertia
They sound great at first - but when you analyze the long term consequences of dependancy, and virtual elimination of casual human contact in the services industry....makes you become really concerned about using them
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