An international team of scientists has determined AI’s ability to identify human emotions. They analysed photographs of actors to test whether facial expressions faithfully convey emotions.
It turns out that people use different facial movements to convey the same emotions. For instance, one person may frown when angry, while another may widen their eyes or even laugh.
The study also found that people use the same gestures to convey different emotions, for example a furrowed brow can signal concentration as well as anger.
During the experiments, researchers photographed professional actors in defined emotional states. Each of the scenarios was analysed in two separate studies.
In the first, 839 volunteers assessed the extent to which the descriptions of the situations elicited one of 13 emotions. The researchers then calculated the average rating for each scenario, grouped them into categories, and used a machine-learning model to analyse the actors’ facial expressions in the photographs.
It turned out that actors used different facial expressions to depict the same states. The analysis also showed that similar poses cannot reliably express the same emotional category.
Subsequently, researchers asked additional groups of volunteers to rate the expressions of each face separately.
They found that judgments about facial expressions in themselves did not reliably correspond to assessments of emotions when considered together with the scenarios.
Co‑author Lisa Feldman Barrett said the results call into question widely held claims about emotional AI.
“Some companies claim that they have algorithms capable, for example, of detecting anger, when in fact — under optimal conditions — there are algorithms that are probably detecting a furrowed brow, which may or may not be an expression of anger,” she said.
Barrett added that it is important not to conflate descriptions of facial configuration with conclusions about emotion.
In July, Russian researchers taught AI to recognise emotions in text.
In May, it emerged that China tested artificial intelligence on Uyghurs for detecting emotions.
In April, scientists unveiled a game to illustrate the risks of emotion recognition by artificial intelligence.
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