I FEEL FOR YOU
Boosting both the individual and corporate EQ, by creating a more effective, meaningful, and satisfying symbiosis between people and their technology enablers
An essential characteristic of intelligent beings, such as humans, is their ability to share different types of ideas, expressions, and feelings. Emotion plays an integral part in our lives. So does technology. Significant progress has been made in the field of user experiences and AI – we see continuous evolution and rapid advancements each day. While technology can interpret and even mimic human emotions to a certain degree, it cannot understand or replicate them – yet. But it has come a long way, if still only artificial and based on a cold, silicon heart. Emphatic technology and Emotion AI can benefit humans in so many ways, providing social comfort and inclusion, understanding and expression, as well as a plethora of industrial applications, of course. Now, it’s more than a feeling. Technology, I think I love you.
Claudia Crummenerl Expert in Residence
WHAT
- Empathy and emotional intelligence work together, enabled by caring, to produce long-lasting relationships. Together, they form the foundation of trust.
- Now more than ever – as businesses redefine their ways of working, technology set-up and organization in the aftermath of the pandemic – empathy is in short supply.
- Organizational empathy is moving beyond “customer centricity” and adding employees to the equation to drive business success. Focus is on the collective capacity of an organization to demonstrate empathy to all stakeholders, as well as a commitment by the organization to develop an understanding of customer needs.
- Emotion AI offers new insights to understand people and customers. Industries are finding ways and identifying areas to integrate emotional intelligence, such as chatbots, virtual assistants, and facial recognition.
- However, Emotion AI requires transparency. For Emotion AI to work and not have the opposite effect, it is crucial to clearly communicate digital ethics and be transparent about what data is collected, for what purpose, with what access rights, and how long it is stored.
- AI is often not trained enough to understand cultural differences in expressing and reading emotions, making it harder to draw accurate judgement. Confusing these meanings can lead to potential bias.
USE
- Indian online tutoring platform, Vedantu leveraged an Emotion AI solution to optimize their educational content, relying on eye tracking and facial coding algorithms to map user journeys and analyze emotional triggers to generate metrics on engagement, attention, and fatigue for students and tutors.
- UCLA Children’s Hospital implemented an AI robot to build peer-to-peer emotional interactions with children by analyzing facial expressions and context of conversations using reinforcement learning.
- Microsoft filed a patent for AI technology, which focuses on giving Xbox games the ability to collect audio streams from voice chat and analyze a player’s emotions to help identify potential issues in people with heightened emotion.
- Seoul Researchers created an AI-based, 5G-integrated virtual emotion recognition system that can be used to recognize any disruptive emotional cues, warning others of potential danger.
- Startup Find Solution, based in Hong Kong, launched 4 Little Trees software, which uses Emotion AI in schools to identify emotions of students, targeting knowledge gaps and offering game-style tests designed to make learning fun.
- Hyundai Motor unveiled a mini EV equipped with Emotion Adaptive Vehicle Control technology that optimizes the vehicle environment based on the driver’s mood.
IMPACT
- Voice-enabled AI technologies actively monitor a user’s voice to check emotional wellbeing through unique vocal biomarkers and predict core symptoms of mood and anxiety disorders: depressed mood, diminished interest, avoidance, and fatigue.
- Companies are leveraging Emotion AI when training call center and tele-sales employees. AI analyzes the quality, tone, and pace of the individual, and trains them to speak with more empathy, confidence, professionalism, and efficiency where needed.
- AI-based approaches can easily detect human expression, such as joy, surprise, fear, or anger, but will soon recognize traits such as age, race, and gender to understand social dynamics, bringing more personalized experiences to consumers – without bias.
- In China, emotion recognition technology is being widely used to bring benefits in many areas including health, anti-terrorism, urban security, and road safety.
TECH
- Emotion AI in learning: Entropik, Smile, Proctortrack
- Employees management: EI Experience, TeamEQ, Amber, Lead Honestly, InsideBoard
- AI to build resilience: Driven, Resilient AI, Resiliency
- Emotional analysis: ENABLEX FACEAI, TypingDNA, Emokit, NVISO, Element Human, Receptiviti, ComapanionMX
- Facial analysis: smileML, Affectiva, Amazon Rekognition, Microsoft Face API
- Driving AI: drivebuddyAI, Affectiva Automotive AI
- Retail solutions: LilyAI, Entropik, madstreetden
- Language analyzer: Watson Tone Analyzer, Vocalis Health, Emoshape, Cognito, Amazon Connect, Modulate-ToxMod