Humans are complex beings, to say the least. The ranges of emotions we go through – even in the space of just one day – can drastically go up and down. It is difficult for us to understand ourselves sometimes, let alone for our technology to. However, the question whether or not technology can grasp our emotions has been debated for years now, with no definitive answer. These days, AI has advanced so much that more than ever though. It can pick up on social cues and can recognize patterns, including when it comes to our emotions. Here we are going to explore if AI can grasp human emotion and to what extent.
Table of Contents
Natural Language Processing
This kind of AI, Natural Language Processing, has gained a lot of attention the past few years. It works by assigning value to text data to understand the language used by humans. This could be through emails or instant messages, for example. This is ultimately to try and decipher what humans are feeling and thinking, along with what reaction this should prompt. To find out more about this type of artificial intelligence, check out nlp sentiment analysis via the link. As well as in text, NLP can be found in the following ways:
Voice Tone
The way humans speak and what they say often depicts how they are feeling. Emotional AI can analyze spoken speech through the tone, language, vocal pitch, and more. It also takes into account any pauses or delays in response that may be triggered by a certain emotion. As well as this, it is designed to pick up on sarcasm and jokes. This is something that could really take over in coming years, as it’s much easier and cheaper for businesses to run AI customer service, for instance, rather than paying a whole host of employees. That being said though, anger and excitement are easily confused by technology as they have similar sounding qualities, such as a quicker pace and increase in volume.
Facial Expressions
AI is increasingly improving when it comes to learning about human facial expressions, and what they mean. This includes microexpressions that could easily be missed from one person to the other. This kind of AI would need some form of video to pick up on the person and recognize their face. There is a lot of hope for this kind of artificial intelligence though, as the focus of technology isn’t likely to waver the same way it could human to human, therefore any change in expression should be picked up by AI. The video quality would need clear imagery and good lighting to be effective though, and it only works when people have expressive faces. This can differ massively, so may not always be the best way to determine what mood a person is in.
The Verdict
AI has come a long way in the past decade and it is becoming more advanced than ever before. The fact that AI is now becoming so sensitive to subtleties in human emotion, such as microexpressions that may even be missed by one human to the next, is a testament to how far it has come. It definitely understands humans better than ever before, so we are excited to see what the future holds.
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