This is why emotional artificial intelligence matters | Maja Pantic | TEDxCERN

Summary

The talk delves into emotional artificial intelligence, a field with potential for immense societal good but also misuse. It discusses technology's ability to sense and analyze human emotions through facial expressions, with applications in therapy for autistic children and detecting depression signs. However, it warns of the risks of data misuse, such as personalized pricing based on online behavior, urging consumers to be vigilant about their digital footprint.

Takeaways

• 🧠 Emotional artificial intelligence (EAI) is a growing field focused on the automatic sensing and analysis of human behavior, particularly facial expressions.
• 🤖 EAI has the potential to greatly benefit people, such as in therapeutic applications with autistic children, where robots can provide consistent facial expressions for learning.
• 📈 The technology is advanced enough to detect and track faces and facial expressions in various scenes, but challenges remain with occlusions, head position changes, and small faces.
• 👶 For autistic children, EAI can help them understand and express emotions in a way that is recognizable to others, facilitating communication.
• 🤝 Robots can be programmed to display the same facial expressions consistently, which is beneficial in therapy sessions where human expressions might vary.
• 😄 Autistic children often respond positively to robots, as seen in therapy sessions where they show increased attentiveness and engagement.
• 😟 EAI can also be used to detect behavioral cues of depression, which is a significant and increasing issue, especially among teenagers and the elderly.
• 🔍 Depressed individuals may exhibit subtle and short-lived smiles and a negative bias in interpreting expressions, which EAI can help identify.
• 💡 The technology can flag these cues to healthcare providers or family members, potentially leading to earlier intervention and support.
• 🛒 However, EAI can be misused, as demonstrated by a Facebook patent for a camera that could customize prices based on consumer behavior and preferences, including medical remedies.
• ⚠️ There is a call to be aware of the data we share, especially behavioral data, as it can be exploited by companies for their benefit, urging consumers to be informed and cautious.

Q & A

What is the main topic of the talk?

The main topic of the talk is Emotional Artificial Intelligence (EAI), also known as affective computing or human-centric AI, which involves the automatic sensing and analysis of human behavior, particularly facial expressions.

Why is the human face important in EAI?

The human face is important in EAI because it is the only observable window of our inner selves, including our emotions, intentions, attitudes, and moods. It is used for recognizing other people and judging various attributes such as age, gender, and sometimes even personality.

What are some of the challenges in EAI technology?

Some challenges in EAI technology include dealing with occluded faces, large changes in head position, especially fast ones, very small faces, and accurately interpreting typical facial expressions in various contexts.

How can EAI be applied in therapy with autistic children?

EAI can be applied in therapy with autistic children by using robots to teach them to recognize and express emotions in a way that typically-developing people can understand. Robots can provide consistent facial expressions and positive feedback, which can help in the iterative loop of behavioral therapy.

Why are autistic children often not able to understand or express facial expressions correctly?

Autistic children often cannot understand or express facial expressions correctly because they may perceive the thousands of daily facial expressions as thousands of different categories, making it difficult for them to generalize and learn the appropriate expressions to communicate their emotions.

What is one example of a positive outcome from using EAI in therapy with autistic children?

One positive outcome is that a child with attention deficit disorder became more attentive after a session with a robot, as reported by his daily supervisor. This shows the potential of EAI to improve focus and engagement in therapy.

How can EAI technology be used to detect signs of depression?

EAI technology can be used to detect signs of depression by automatically sensing and analyzing behavioral cues such as the quality and intensity of smiles, as well as the presence of negative bias in interpreting situations.

What is the potential misuse of EAI technology mentioned in the talk?

The potential misuse of EAI technology mentioned in the talk is the patenting of a camera by Facebook that could recognize people and customize prices based on their online search patterns and behavioral signals in shops, leading to higher prices for those who show more interest in a product.

How can consumers protect themselves from the misuse of their data by companies?

Consumers can protect themselves by being aware, getting informed, not clicking on all cookies, and being cautious about the kind of information they give away. They should keep their own data for their own use.

What is the speaker's final message to the audience regarding EAI technology?

The speaker's final message is to be aware and informed about how EAI technology can be used and misused, and to take care of the personal data they provide to companies to prevent potential misuse.

Outlines

00:00

😀 Emotional AI: Potential and Ethical Considerations

This paragraph introduces the concept of emotional artificial intelligence (AI), a burgeoning field within AI research with significant potential to benefit society. It discusses the automatic sensing and analysis of human behavior, particularly facial expressions, which serve as a window to our emotions and intentions. The speaker highlights the advanced state of the technology, which can detect and analyze facial expressions in various scenarios. However, they also acknowledge the challenges, such as dealing with occluded faces and rapid head movements. The paragraph emphasizes the importance of consumer awareness in determining the ethical use of this technology, setting the stage for a deeper exploration of its applications and misuse.

05:00

🤖 Emotional AI in Therapy and Autism

The second paragraph delves into the application of emotional AI in therapeutic settings, specifically for children with autism. It explains the difficulty autistic children face in interpreting facial expressions due to their atypical generalization abilities. The speaker suggests that robots can be more effective than human therapists in teaching these children to recognize and express emotions consistently. The use of robots provides a controlled environment for learning, as they can offer the same facial expression repeatedly, which is crucial for autistic children's understanding. The paragraph provides examples of successful interactions between autistic children and robots, illustrating the positive impact of emotional AI on communication and social skills.

10:04

😟 Detecting Depression with Emotional AI

This paragraph explores the use of emotional AI in identifying behavioral cues of depression. The speaker discusses the alarming rates of depression among various demographics, emphasizing the need for tools that can detect early signs of this mental health issue. The technology can analyze the quality of smiles and the presence of negative bias in facial expressions, which are indicative of depression. The speaker contrasts the public misconception of depression with the actual behavioral signals that AI can detect. The paragraph also raises concerns about the potential misuse of emotional AI, such as Facebook's patent for a camera that could potentially adjust prices based on consumers' online behavior and preferences, including sensitive information about health conditions.

Keywords

💡Emotional Artificial Intelligence

Emotional Artificial Intelligence (EAI) refers to the field of AI that focuses on the automatic sensing and analysis of human emotions and behavior, particularly facial expressions. It is central to the video's theme as it discusses the potential of EAI to improve lives, such as in therapy for autistic children and in detecting signs of depression. The script mentions EAI's various names like 'affective computing' and 'human-centric AI,' highlighting its significance in understanding and responding to human emotions.

💡Affective Computing

Affective Computing is one of the terms used interchangeably with Emotional Artificial Intelligence. It is the study and development of systems and devices that can recognize, interpret, and simulate human emotions. In the video, affective computing is presented as a key area of research within EAI, emphasizing its role in creating technology that can detect and respond to human emotions, which is crucial for applications like therapy and mental health monitoring.

💡Human-Centric Artificial Intelligence

Human-Centric Artificial Intelligence is an approach to AI development that prioritizes human needs, emotions, and behaviors. The concept is mentioned in the script to describe the underlying research behind EAI, indicating that the technology is designed to be more attuned to human emotional states and interactions, which is essential for creating empathetic and responsive AI systems.

💡Facial Expressions

Facial Expressions are the movements of the face that convey a person's emotions or reactions. The script discusses the importance of facial expressions as a window into a person's inner feelings and states of mind. It also highlights the role of EAI in analyzing these expressions for applications like therapy for autistic children, where understanding and mimicking facial expressions can be beneficial.

💡Autism

Autism, or Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), is a developmental disorder characterized by challenges with social skills, repetitive behaviors, and speech and nonverbal communication. The video script uses the context of autism to illustrate the potential of EAI in therapy, where robots can be programmed to display consistent facial expressions to help autistic children learn to recognize and express emotions.

💡Behavioral Therapy

Behavioral Therapy is a type of psychological treatment that focuses on changing undesirable behaviors or habits. In the script, it is mentioned as a method used in conjunction with EAI to help autistic children learn to express emotions and understand the emotions of others, using robots as consistent and reliable models for facial expressions.

💡Depression

Depression is a common mental health disorder characterized by persistent feelings of sadness, hopelessness, and a lack of interest or pleasure in activities. The video script discusses the application of EAI in detecting behavioral cues of depression, such as changes in facial expressions and emotional responses, which can be flagged for medical attention or support.

💡Misuse of Technology

Misuse of Technology refers to the improper or unethical use of technological advancements for negative purposes. The script warns about the potential misuse of EAI, such as Facebook's patent for a camera that could customize prices based on behavioral patterns, including those of medical remedies, which raises ethical concerns about privacy and fairness.

💡Data Privacy

Data Privacy is the protection of personal information from unauthorized access or disclosure. The video emphasizes the importance of being aware of data privacy issues, especially in the context of how companies collect and use behavioral data, which can lead to misuse if not properly managed or consented to by the individuals involved.

💡Cookies

Cookies are small pieces of data stored on a user's device when visiting a website, often used to track browsing behavior and preferences. The script mentions cookies as an example of how users' online activities are monitored and data is collected, urging viewers to be cautious about accepting cookies and to protect their data privacy.

💡Ethical Considerations

Ethical Considerations refer to the moral principles and values that guide decision-making, especially regarding what is right and wrong. The video script touches on the ethical implications of EAI, discussing both its potential for good, such as in therapy and mental health, and the risks of misuse, emphasizing the need for consumers to be aware and make informed decisions about their technology use.

Highlights

Emotional artificial intelligence (EAI) is a new field in AI with the potential for immense good or misuse.

EAI, also known as affective computing or human-centric AI, involves automatic sensing and analysis of human behavior and facial expressions.

The human face is a crucial window into our emotions, intentions, attitudes, and moods.

Technological advancements have enabled the detection and analysis of facial expressions in various naturalistic scenes.

Current technology can measure the intensity of facial gestures like frowns and smiles, and analyze higher-level behaviors and emotions.

Challenges remain in dealing with occluded faces, large head position changes, very small faces, and typical facial expressions.

EAI is mature enough for applications such as therapy with autistic children, where it can help teach emotional expression and recognition.

Autistic children often struggle with the complexity of facial expressions, making communication challenging.

Robots can be programmed to display consistent facial expressions, aiding in therapy for autistic children.

Autistic children's affinity for mechanical toys makes robots particularly effective in therapy.

EAI can also be used to detect and flag behavioral cues of depression, a significant issue in the Western world.

Depression's impact is particularly severe among teenagers and the elderly, with many cases going undetected and untreated.

EAI can analyze the quality of smiles and negative bias in interpretation, which are indicators of depression.

Facebook patented a camera technology that could potentially misuse EAI by customizing prices based on consumer behavior and preferences.

The potential misuse of EAI raises ethical concerns, especially when it comes to privacy and the exploitation of personal data.

Consumers must be aware and informed about the data they share, including behavioral and facial expression data.

The talk emphasizes the importance of being cautious with the personal data shared online and the potential for both positive and negative uses of EAI.

Transcripts

[Music]

[Applause]

this talk is about emotional artificial

intelligence it's a relatively new field

in research in artificial intelligence

but it has a great potential to do

immense good to people for people

however the technology can be misused

and in this talk I want to make a point

that actually it is up to us the

consumers of this technology who will

decide whether the technology will be

used for good or for evil but let me

first explain what emotional artificial

intelligence is really about so

emotional artificial intelligence goes

by various names affective computing is

one of those another one is human

centric artificial intelligence but

actually behind all of those names is

exactly the same research topic

automatic sensing and analysis of human

behavior and in particular human facial

behavior human face is really

fascinating we use the face to recognize

other members of our species to

recognize other people use the face also

to judge various things such as age

gender beauty and sometimes even

personality don't do the last one most

importantly the human face is the only

observable window of our inner selves of

our emotions intentions attitudes and

moods it is therefore not surprising

that in the recent years we had a surge

of interest in this technology and if we

could I mean the reason is that if we

could detect the faces in various

naturalistic scenes and then analyze the

facial expressions of

those phases in terms of specific

emotions or specific attitudes we could

use this kind of technology for a very

wide number of applications the state of

the art in the field is relatively

advanced so we do have and we did

develop a number of techniques that

could detect and track the phases in

various and realistic scenes we also do

have the tools that can detect track and

measure the intensity of various facial

gestures such as frowns and smiles we

also can automatically analyze

higher-level behaviors such as certain

emotions and certain attitudes like

interest however the methodology and the

technology is not fully matured so we

still have great problems in dealing

with occluded faces with dealing with

faces which where we observe large

changes in head position especially fast

changes in head position very small

faces make problem to us and also our

typical facial expressions such as the

expressions of the lady enjoying her

skydive however the technology is

matured enough to be used in a large

number of really great applications so

let me just give a couple of examples of

those the first example I want to talk

about is use of emotional artificial

intelligence in therapies with autistic

children the human face displays 10,000

different facial expressions 7,000 of

which we display on a daily basis

typically developing people classify

those expressions in maybe 15 or 20

categories

however autistic children means this

generalization ability so 7,000 facial

expressions that we express on a daily

basis they see a 7,000 different

categories this is the reason why

autistic children usually do not look at

our faces they are too confusing for

that but this is also the reason

why they can not understand what are our

facial expressions when we try to

express that we are sad or we are upset

or we are happy this is also the reason

why they cannot learn what are those

expressions that they should display

when they want to say that they are

happier they are upset

so that typically-developing people can

understand them and hence the breakage

in communication so one of the major

goals of behavioural therapy with

autistic children is to give them the

tools the skills to actually express the

emotions in a way that

typically-developing people can

understand and also to understand what

are the emotions of others around them

and one of the problems with this is

that when you have a human teach a child

these typical expressions humans like

and usually emphasize things so when

they teach the child you know when you

are happy you smile they usually raise

the eyebrows and most of you probably

didn't notice that at all right but

actually for autistic child a smile with

raised eyebrows is a very different

expression than just a smile so this is

where we came to the idea to use the

robots instead of human therapists

because you can program the robot and

the expression that the robot will show

will always be the same expression right

so when the therapist says you know can

you display a happy facial expression or

how would you feel if you get a train

then the robot complies and shows this

smiley expression the child sees this

expression repeats the expression and

then the robot because it recognizes

that the child display the correct

facial expression gives a positive

feedback so this is the way you can use

the robots in this iterative loop of

behavioral therapy with autistic

children autistic children love robots

they actually love all mechanical toys

which are built of parts

and exactly this love is something that

can have a really amazing effect on

children so the district herb boy that

you have previously seen suffers from

rather severe attention deficit however

after this session with robot his daily

supervisor who is this guy in the

background said to us that he has never

seen the boy more attentive in a whole

year right similarly when we brought the

robot to Serbia to have a session with

Serbian autistic children we had this

boy who is a nonverbal child interacting

with with a robot when we say a

nonverbal autistic child this doesn't

mean that the child cannot speak it

means that the child chooses not to

speak but after this session you see he

was really like happy and he was really

enjoying his time with the robot and

after the session he went home and said

to his mom and tomorrow in school the

robot he said to his mom so the mother

of course immediately wrote to us and

said what did you do like this is

amazing it was it was for her an

unbelievable awakening and this kind of

awakenings is actually what makes the

robot worthy of putting into the

therapies with autistic children and

this is what makes our research on this

topic fully worthwhile another case and

a very good application of emotional

artificial intelligence technology is

the case of automatic sensing and

flagging behavioral cues of depression

depression is a huge problem currently

in Western world we are having an

increase of depressed people at all age

levels however with teenagers this is

the worst in USA and UK we currently

have 25 percent of teenage girls

suffering from this illness overall 17

percent of young adults aged 18 to 22

suffer from depression it is very

similar the case with the elderly

population in UK we have 22% of people

above 65 years of age who suffer from

depression the worst part is it actually

only one out of ten of these elderly

people are officially helped by UK

national health services so it would be

really fantastic if we would have tools

that could actually detect these signs

behavioral cues of depression and flag

them to GP or to the family members when

you talk to people about depression they

often may say to you you know depressed

people do not smile that often but it is

not at all the case it is not a

frequency it is really the quality of

the smiles depressed people feel usually

embarrassed if they smile so their

smiles are short-lived and they are

often dampened another problem is the

negative bias so whatever you say to a

depressed person they will actually

interpret it more negatively than the

intention was let me ask you something

what do you think this lady is currently

watching a very typical answer is that

she's watching some kind of horror movie

but actually we asked her to watch funny

videos she's watching the videos of kids

and cats running around but due to her

negative bias she has these very strong

expressions of fear and even disgust her

smiles are really so subtle that the

intensity of them are barely detectable

and it is exactly this the cumulative

effect of all those behavioral signals

that we plot on this

lined plot at the bottom of the vida so

emotional artificial intelligence can be

used for great purposes really to help

people to help humanity but it can also

be misused let me give you an example in

the sample 2017 Facebook patented a

camera the camera will be placed in

shops and shopping malls it will

recognize people by their profiles in

facebook currently Facebook has 1.4

billion

profits also the camera will know what

are the search patterns that the people

exhibited on Facebook and on Google so

they will know what we like or what we

are interested in

furthermore the camera will watch our

behavioral signals in the shop what do

we like to which departments do we go

most often and based on all of this the

price will be customized so the more you

search for something the more you like

something the price will be higher the

worst part is actually that neither

medicines nor medical care nor medical

services are excluded from the pattern

so if somebody is ill insert is a remedy

online and has a Facebook account that

person will unfortunately pay much

higher prices for this medical remedy

although again emotional artificial

intelligence can be used for really

great purposes and great good it can be

badly misused but it is especially the

case if we carelessly and blindly give

our data our behavioral data to certain

companies so this is exactly what's

happening nowadays I mean you go to any

website they ask you to

clicking except these cookies right what

are the cookies the cookies are actually

the search patterns of what you do what

did you search to which website you went

how many times you visited that website

what did you purchase how many times you

purchase that so they have four

behavioral pattern of your purchasing

behavior then we go to this Facebook we

open the profile we put our pictures

with P to put our children's picture we

put our friends then we tag everybody we

put videos so they give everything they

have the faces they have the behavioral

patterns they have how we smile which is

a dynamic thing right they have can we

walk what makes us happy where we go

most often so then you go back to their

part and then you realize how harmful

that can be so the message for today

really is

be aware get informed you don't have to

click on all of these cookies all the

time you can actually scroll without

accepting the cookies

take care what kind of information you

give away and keep your own data for

your own thank you

[Applause]

[Music]

[Applause]