Speech to text converters are coming into their own. But speech isn’t just words and sentences. The use of emotion recognition might prove challenging as well, he added. Despite the claims that it improves love connections and speeds job interviews, consumers might bristle at the thought of being handled gingerly by a machine because they happen to have a note of frustration in their voices. “The emotion-recognition aspect is being discussed widely,” Hegebarth said. “But there doesn’t seem to be a really reliable way of detecting emotional states fully, and some callers might not like it. They could find it intrusive.” |link| So what do they find intrusive? From an informal survey I conducted a while ago, it seems at least a slim majority of people don’t mind the idea of giving up information to an artificial system per se, provided certain assurances that the information won’t cross human hands (cf Gmail, for instance). In any case, I dont think there is the same reaction of intrustion is, for instance, a human speaker registers the emotion in your voice and reacts accordingly. In fact, I imagine that we expect the human to be able to handle my specific case when they are talking to me, emotions and all. It seems to me that what is intrusive about a automated and mechanical response to human emotions is that it makes our emotional response itself seem mechanical and predictable. That my tone of anger doesn’t provoke a sympathetic response, but that it merely places me in the ‘anger’ category, to be dealt with in such and such a way. In other words, if the machines become responsive to our emotions, then even our most emotional response can still be understood as the behavior of machines.

my bioass. From the Heidegger-would-not-approve department: The moral imperative to extend human life for as long as conceivably possible, and to improve its quality by artificial means, is no different from the responsibility to save lives in danger of ending prematurely, Professor Harris will say. Any technology that can achieve this should be actively pursued. |link| A long life doesn’t mean a quality life. One might think that we have the imperative to genetically engineer kids to learn at even more advanced rates early on, while their brains are still plastic, for a fuller and more productive early life, even at the risk of shortening its length. I’m no ethicist, but I dont see either consequentialist or deontological reasons for rejecting that possibility from the start. In any case, it seems like this same argument could be phrased as: we have an obligation to make humans as cybernetic and artificial as possible. Well, thats just silly. I speak up for machines a lot here, but central to my view is that we need to draw a distinction between humans and machines. Our machines are not just extensions of persons, they are participants in their own right. Ignoring this fact inclines us to think that the sole purpose of technology is to envelope the individual in a technological womb, to protect us from the world. But technology is no protector. Technology doesnt give us a free win, it changes the game.

I am writing this response to a conference paper that argues that the internet can alieviate alienation. I couldn’t be more sympathetic, but her paper doesn’t really address the concerns of the opposing camp, which says that the internet could never substitute for real relationships. Dreyfus has his catchphrase: “Whatever hugs do for people, telehugs wont do it”. The opposing view is something like “You’re never alone when you have the internet”. But the more I think about it, the more obvious it is that this is a false dichotomy. There was a post on Boing Boing a while ago about Lover’s Cups. The Lover’s Cups can enhance the traditional communications. Julie and her best friend Ann live in different states. When Julie got tired or stressed, she had a conversation with Ann through the internet messenger program. However, the text-only communication limited their sympathy and emotional interactions. Today, Julie and Ann use their Lover’s Cups. Julie suggests to Ann to have a coffee break by shaking her cup. While talking through the messenger, they have a feeling of that they are drinking coffee together, and it makes them feel more relaxed and connected. It strikes me that this feeling of ‘connection’ through the cups will only cause the appropriate affective state in a person in very special circumstances, and only with a very willing participant- putting the status of successful affective interaction on par with, say, hypnotism or tarot card reading. Someone who doesn’t buy into the conceit of these cups just won’t get anything out of it. But this analysis goes a long way to explaining the hard-nosed stance of the two opposing camps. Dreyfus and the skeptics see this as at most a degenerate form of interaction, at worst that the players are just fooling themselves and […]

From the Dumb Research department: “Of course, nothing proves anything,” Huang, a UI electrical and computer engineering professor, said recently.|link|

The machine makes it possible to type messages onto a computer screen by mentally controlling the movement of a cursor. A user must wear a cap containing electrodes that measure electrical activity inside the brain, known as an electroencephalogram (EEG) signal, and imagine moving their left or right arm in order to manoeuvre the cursor around.|link| So we can’t read your intentions directly off your brain, but we can indirectly figure out where you imagine moving your arms. So the subjects must actually think about moving their arms, and not the cursor, in order to get the cursor to move. I wonder if this process can become transparent, the way we use our mouse and keyboard now; or if making the motor commands explicit in consciousness will wind up limiting the use of these sorts of tools beyond anything practical.

(click the picture for the whole sad robot story)

Remember Robocup? Meet the newest contender. The Eco-Be, which measures less than one square inch, features a motor unit adapted from tiny watch motors. With a lithium battery, small LED and microprocessor on board, the robot can move forward and backward, as well as turn around. It can be remotely controlled via a built-in infrared module. Each robot unit has a unique address, allowing multiple robots to be controlled independently and play simultaneously.|link|

What it is: White Box’s 914 PC-Bot; $1,500 and up. How it works: Looking and acting like a steel PC roaming about on rubber wheels, the 914 runs off Windows but was built to be hacked and programmed to its master’s specs. Does it do windows? This is a combo surveillance ‘bot and entertainment center (it surfs the Web, word processes, and plays games). A model “MP3” version plays music, burns CDs, and includes a 5.5-inch screen for playing games or watching movies.|link|

http://internetisshit.org/ We need to start again. We need to stop saying how wonderful things are. We need to openly, truthfully and respectfully admit that the internet itself, in almost all of what’s been done with it, is shit.

Reality: “A person who signs onto an anonymous forum under a pseudonym…is surely entitled to a reasonable expectation that his speech…will not be accessible to the Government…absent appropriate legal process. To hold otherwise would ignore the role of the internet as a remarkably powerful forum for private communication and association. Even the Government concedes that the internet is an ‘important vehicle for the free exchange of ideas and facilitates associations.’” |link| Delusion: The operator of any interactive computer service or an Internet service provider shall establish, maintain and enforce a policy to require any information content provider who posts written messages on a public forum website either to be identified by a legal name and address, or to register a legal name and address with the operator of the interactive computer service or the Internet service provider through which the information content provider gains access to the interactive computer service or Internet, as appropriate.|link| Note that all these bills begin with the service/content distinction, and the legal definition of the interenet. More info.

“The short answer is no one really know what kind of emotions people want in robots, ” said Maja Mataric, a computer science professor at the University of Southern California. But scientists are trying to figure it out: Dr. Mataric was speaking last week from a conference on human-robot interaction in Salt Lake City. There are signs that in some cases, at least, a cranky or sad robot might be more effective than a happy or neutral one. At Carnegie Mellon University, Rachel Gockley, a graduate student, found that in certain circumstances people spent more time interacting with a robotic receptionist — a disembodied face on a monitor — when the face looked and sounded unhappy. And at Stanford, Clifford Nass, a professor of communication, found that in a simulation, drivers in a bad mood had far fewer accidents when they were listening to a subdued voice making comments about the drive. “When you’re sad, you do much better working with a sad voice,” Dr. Nass said. “You don’t feel like hanging around with somebody who says, ‘Hi! How are you!’ ” That illustrates the longer answer to the question of what humans want in their robots: emotions like those they encounter in other humans. “People respond to robots in precisely the same way they respond to people,” Dr. Nass said.|link| Well, for me, a chess game is a conversation of sorts. From my perspective, today’s off-the-shelf computer programs come awfully close to meeting Turing’s test.|link|