Your smile is fake" - emotion recognition system assesses how happy employees are

[zakiyatasnim]

China has created an artificial intelligence system that can assess a person's mood based on their facial expressions. The manufacturer claims that the program will help reduce conflicts and discipline people. However, experts are not so optimistic.



Imagine that you have worked for 12 hours, you feel tired and frustrated, but you force yourself to maintain a neutral expression on your face. You have no strength left, but you cannot yawn, frown or frown - an all-seeing eye is watching you. It monitors your emotional state and will definitely let you know if you look angrier than you should.

This is not the plot of a science fiction movie or an episode of the TV series “Black Mirror.” For some employees of Chinese technology corporations, it is already becoming a reality.

An emotion recognition system developed by Chinese company Taigusys can detect and track people's facial expressions and create detailed reports on each person to capture their emotional state. However, researchers note that such systems are not only often wrong, but also completely unethical.

The system was first mentioned in a May investigation by The Guardian. Taigusys lists corporations such as Huawei, China Mobile and PetroChina as its clients. However, it is not known whether the product is used in their offices.

Insider contacted Taigusys and 36 companies on its partner list, but none responded to requests for comment.

How does it work?


The company's website states that its system helps "solve new problems" and can "minimize conflicts" related to emotional behavior.

This is done using an artificial intelligence system that can read the facial expressions of multiple people simultaneously. The algorithm then studies the facial muscle movements and biometric features of each person and rates them on several scales described by Taigusys.

Good emotions are happiness, surprise, and feelings caused by something positive.
Negative ones are disgust, sadness, embarrassment, contempt, and anger.
Neutral — for example, how focused a person is on a task.
Taigusys claims that the program is so subtle that it can detect if someone is faking a smile.

It also generates reports about people in which it can iran number data recommend “emotional support” if markers of negative emotions exceed the norm.



"Based on the analysis of a person's facial features, the system can calculate various metrics, including how conflicted, tense, or nervous the person is. We can also analyze the person's emotional reaction and find out if they are up to something suspicious," the company's product description says.

Ethics and human rights
Human rights activists and tech experts Insider say the trend is alarming: unethical, unscientific ideas underlie emotion recognition systems.

Vidushi Marda, senior director of the British human rights program Article 19, and Shazeda Ahmed, a graduate student in philosophy at the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley, published a study in January 2021 with striking results. They identified 27 companies in China that were working on developing emotion recognition programs, including Taigusys.

"If such technology is implemented, it violates the ethical and legal rights of employees in the workplace. Even private companies are expected to respect the privacy and dignity of employees, as well as their right to freedom of action and thought," Marda adds.