Microsoft Scientist: Emotion-Reading AI Is Doomed To Fail

Artificial Intelligence developers have an uncanny knack for reinventing bunk pseudoscience. Whether it's resuscitating phrenology as facial recognition that can supposedly determine someone's personality or claiming to universally detect emotions based on appearance, the AI field has a long history of claiming to do the impossible. The challenge is that building an algorithm to detect someone's emotions ignores cultural differences and other important factors, Microsoft and University of South California Annenberg researcher Kate Crawford argues in The Atlantic. In an adapted segment of her book, "Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence," Crawford lays out the complicated and flawed history of scientists trying to tie emotion to specific facial movements -- and how AI algorithms attempting to do the same are essentially doomed to fail. Scientists have been trying for decades to codify the facial expressions linked to different emotions, Crawford wrote, and yet it's never worked.