CHANDIGARH: In his 1998 media address, former US president
Bill Clinton strongly denied allegations of having sexual relations with a female employee of the
White House.
On the face of it, it seemed Clinton had been falsely implicated, but
recently, technology has helped analyze his emotions at the time of his
address.
In the more than five-minute video, a billboard was
superimposed, which added its own algorithmic software to evaluate
Clinton's underlying feelings. It demonstrated Clinton's "strong
internal conviction", "desire to convince" and "desperation to win the
support of Americans," while addressing the media.
Such analyses has become possible with the help of an
emotion detection system
that can easily understand the meaning of intonations of voices and
represent them. The software is being widely used by various global
companies, especially BPOs and consultancy firms.
Many
interesting offshoots of this emotion detection software have been
developed in the form of various apps. Some companies at IT Park,
Chandigarh, are also using the software. Nitin Moudgil, who runs a
software development firm at IT Park, said, "My clients are based in
France and Sweden. Of late, I have started using an emotion detector
software. It is really smart and helps you get a fair idea about the
mindset of your potential client. Besides video calls, it also helps in
text chatting."
Working, future prospects
A billboard
is superimposed on the video or audio clip, that adds its own
algorithmic evaluation software to understand original feelings. The
software is an emotion detection system that strikes correlations
between voice intonations before presenting a conclusion.
The
algorithms could rank the enthusiasm of candidates by evaluating his
reading or way of speaking and also analyse whether he is an introvert
or extrovert inquisitive or more practical.
They can also
evaluate a person"s mood and suggest a playlist of songs. The algorithms
can help computers understand what humans feel, a field known as
"affective computing".
New techniques have been developed in computational voice analysis that help machines to identify with the help of writing.
Helps to detect 400 different moods:
There are emotion detection software that can help detect 400 different
mood variations, from happiness to sadness, optimism to dejection and
seriousness to casualness.
Research and development is on and
efforts are being made to introduce emotional understanding into
practically everything humans do; including face-to-face interactions,
driving cars or playing games.
Steve Jobs showed signs of loneliness and fatigue in last interview: In one of his last interviews, while
Steve Jobs
recollected old memories and talked about his feelings while the
i-phone was developed, he was actually feeling lonely and fatigued. This
was deduced by an emotion detection software. The nearly two-minute
youtube video has gone viral across the world.
"I had this idea of being able to get rid of the keyboard, type on a
multi-touch glass display and I asked our folks, could we come up with a
multi-touch display that I could type on, I could rest my hands on and
type on. It (i-phone) was
amazing," said a
smiling Jobs in the interview. However, the billboard superimposed over
this video said Jobs was in the throes of various emotions at the time.
There were "conflicts between urges and self-control, loneliness,
fatigue, emotional frustration, sadness mixed with happiness, possibly
nostalgia." It is said in a ticker run over Jobs"s head.
Tel-Aviv based start-up behind this software:
Research in the direction of evaluating voice intonations to understand
underlying emotions and meanings, was started way back in 2011.
However, the first success was made in 2012, when a Tel Aviv (Israel)
based start-up offered a nascent technology to study consumers" emotions
in real time. Their initial clients were call centres. Gradually, more
companies jumped into the field. At present, many softwares and apps are
available for this.
Emotional analytics engine:
Most of the emotion detection software have their own algorithms that
work on an independent emotional analytics engine. From the parent
company, license of these algorithms are given to third parties to
develop apps and to make a new class of devices capable of detecting
real emotions.
Gray area; intruding privacy:
Many voices have also been raised on various platforms against the
emotions detecting software. Protesters say it is tantamount to
intruding into the private life of people and companies should take
prior permission from their clients before using the software on them.
Questions have also been raised on the accuracy of results and findings
as it could end up making arbitrary and discriminatory decisions.
