From: The Wall Street Journal
The Technology that Unmasks Your Hidden Emotions
The Wall Street Journal:
Paul Ekman, perhaps the world’s most famous face reader, fears he has created a monster.
The 80-year-old psychologist pioneered the study of facial expressions in the 1970s, creating a catalog of more than 5,000 muscle movements to show how the subtlest wrinkling of the nose or lift of an eyebrow reveal hidden emotions.
Now, a group of young companies with names like Emotient Inc., Affectiva Inc. and Eyeris are using Dr. Ekman’s research as the backbone of a technology that relies on algorithms to analyze people’s faces and potentially discover their deepest feelings. Collectively, they are amassing an enormous visual database of human emotions, seeking patterns that can predict emotional reactions and behavior on a massive scale.
Dr. Ekman, who agreed to become an adviser to Emotient, says he is torn between the potential power of all this data and the need to ensure it is used responsibly, without infringing on personal privacy.
Read the whole story: The Wall Street Journal
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