Emotion

Emotional intelligence is an essential skill in the customer service functions with the productivity and efficiency of the role is directly tied to the quality of conversations. The personal dynamics of emotionally cognisant customer service agents play an important role in empathetically resolving any queries or concerns, impacting customer churn and increasing brand loyalty by leaving customers with a positive impression of an organisation. However, rapid adoption of automation technology within customer-facing roles presents new challenges to organisations that want to harness its benefits, without impacting the service that it delivers to its customers. Already helping many companies increase customer service availability, reduce wait times and improve resolution rates, Gartner has predicted that a quarter of all customer service operations will use artificial intelligence (AI)-powered virtual assistants by 2020. In many organisations, this has resulted in the creation of a hybrid workforce of human and digital agents.

Emotional intelligence is an essential skill in the customer service functions with the productivity and efficiency of the role is directly tied to the quality of conversations. The personal dynamics of emotionally cognisant customer service agents play an important role in empathetically resolving any queries or concerns, impacting customer churn and increasing brand loyalty by leaving customers with a positive impression of an organisation. However, rapid adoption of automation technology within customer-facing roles presents new challenges to organisations that want to harness its benefits, without impacting the service that it delivers to its customers. Already helping many companies increase customer service availability, reduce wait times and improve resolution rates, Gartner has predicted that a quarter of all customer service operations will use artificial intelligence (AI)-powered virtual assistants by 2020. In many organisations, this has resulted in the creation of a hybrid workforce of human and digital agents.

Is emotional AI ready to be a key component of our cars and other devices? Analysts are predicting huge growth for emotional AI in the coming years, albeit with widely differing estimates. A 2018 study by Market Research Future (MRFR) predicted that the "emotional analytics" market, which includes video, speech, and facial analytics technologies among others, will be worth a whopping $25 billion globally by 2025. Tractica has made a more conservative estimate in its own analysis, but still predicted the "emotion recognition and sentiment analysis" market to reach $3.8 billion by 2025. Researchers at Gartner have predicted that by 2022 10 percent of all personal electronic devices will have emotion AI capabilities, either on the device itself or via cloud-based services.

Virtual Reality (VR) is opening up exciting new frontiers in the development of video games, paving the way for increasingly realistic, interactive and immersive gaming experiences. VR consoles, in fact, allow gamers to feel like they are almost inside the game, overcoming limitations associated with display resolution and latency issues. An interesting further integration for VR would be emotion recognition, as this could enable the development of games that respond to a user's emotions in real time. With this in mind, a team of researchers at Yonsei University and Motion Device Inc. have recently proposed a deep-learning-based technique that could enable emotion recognition during VR gaming experiences. Their paper was presented at the 2019 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3-D User Interfaces.

Intelligence is the ability to gather information and apply it to the human experience. This was true when silicon was just a shiny rock, and it's true now that machines are becoming more intelligent. Businesses today need to deliver a different kind of intelligence: a high emotional quotient (EQ), which Harvard theorist Howard Gardner describes as the ability to understand what motivates another person and how to meet their needs. EQ (otherwise known as emotional intelligence) is mostly used to describe people--a friend's ability to empathize with a difficult situation, a manager adapting her approach to an employee's work style, or a salesperson relating to a potential buyer. It turns out that EQ is also important for businesses.

A team of researchers at Yonsei University and École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) has recently developed a new technique that can recognize emotions by analyzing people's faces in images along with contextual features. They presented and outlined their deep learning-based architecture, called CAER-Net, in a paper pre-published on arXiv. For several years, researchers worldwide have been trying to develop tools for automatically detecting human emotions by analyzing images, videos or audio clips. These tools could have numerous applications, for instance, improving robot-human interactions or helping doctors to identify signs of mental or neural disorders (e.g.,, based on atypical speech patterns, facial features, etc.). So far, the majority of techniques for recognizing emotions in images have been based on the analysis of people's facial expressions, essentially assuming that these expressions best convey humans' emotional responses.

A team of researchers at Yonsei University and École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) has recently developed a new technique that can recognize emotions by analyzing people's faces in images along with contextual features. They presented and outlined their deep learning-based architecture, called CAER-Net, in a paper pre-published on arXiv. For several years, researchers worldwide have been trying to develop tools for automatically detecting human emotions by analyzing images, videos or audio clips. These tools could have numerous applications, for instance, improving robot-human interactions or helping doctors to identify signs of mental or neural disorders (e.g.,, based on atypical speech patterns, facial features, etc.). So far, the majority of techniques for recognizing emotions in images have been based on the analysis of people's facial expressions, essentially assuming that these expressions best convey humans' emotional responses.

AI bias is in the news – and it's a hard problem to solve When AI engages with humans – how does AI know what humans really means? In other words, why is it hard for AI to detect human bias? That's because humans do not say what they really mean due to factors such as cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance refers to a situation involving conflicting attitudes, beliefs or behaviours. This produces a feeling of mental discomfort leading to an alteration in one of the attitudes, beliefs or behaviours to reduce the discomfort and restore balance.

For his next book, Joseph LeDoux knew he had to go deep. He had to go back in time, way back, 3.5 billion years ago. The author of the seminal The Emotional Brain, followed by Synaptic Self and Anxious, sensed a missing element in those books on how brain anatomy and function shape human behavior and emotions. In his new book, The Deep History of Ourselves: The Four-Billion-Year Story of How We Got Our Conscious Brains, LeDoux takes readers back to the emergence of life on Earth to show what our protean brains today owe to the canny survival of Protozoa. "I started asking, 'How far back in evolution does the ability to detect and respond to danger go?'" he said to me in a recent interview at his home in New York City. LeDoux directs the Emotional Brain Institute at New York University. In his research and previous books, he has shown the human brain processes that detect and respond to danger differ from the conscious experiences of fear itself. "I felt I needed to understand more about this process," he said.

LEVERAGE YOUR POSITION Andy Stanley, pastor of one of the largest church in America - Northpoint in Atlanta, made this statement about leadership: "You leverage that power for the benefit of other people in the room." Many people in leadership positions do quite the opposite. They use their power and position to serve their selfish agenda. Little do they know that this approach will work against them and their organization, in the long run. How often have I heard, or read of people purposefully undermine this kind of leadership?