I have never warmed up
to many different electronic devices. I don't like electronic
devices that talk to me. During the years, I've gotten into too many
arguments with my GPS over directions. It always thinks it knows the
best route, but when I tell it I'm going a different way, it just
keeps talking and disagreeing with me. I've screamed at my GPS to
shut up, said some very disparaging things about its voice and even
told it I was not its first owner and I had no idea how many men had
used it. It keeps talking to me like it is not even listening to a
word I say. At times, it feels like we're married. Now, there is an
effort to develop electronic devices that can tell you what you're
feeling. I don't think this would work too well with me.
“Will you shut up,
I'm going the back way to my friend's house.”
“Turn right at the
next intersection.”
“No, I told you I'm
going down Ron's driveway to Ed's driveway and then back onto the
road. It will cut out at least twenty minutes on my trip.”
“You seem angry.”
“You seem to to be
one GPS unit that does not know how to shut up.”
“Could you have
suppressed anger issues because your mother screamed so much when you
were learning how to drive?”
“Hey, that shows how
much you know, my mother, father, and dog screamed all the time when
I was learning how to drive.”
“Maybe you should
learn how to drive.”
“Maybe you should
learn how easily you can be disconnected and sold for parts.”
“You have not reached
your final destination and I don't care.”
“Good.”
Crum, who is the chief
scientist at Dolby Laboratories in San Francisco, CA, and an adjunct
professor at Stanford University in the Center for Computer Research
in Music and Acoustics, defines empathetic technology as "technology
that is using our internal state to decide how it will respond and
make decisions."
So now there is a type
of technology that will try to determine how we make decisions and
respond. Will we be sitting in our living rooms someday and watching
sports when Alexa will tell us there is a 79 percent chance we are
excited about the game we are watching, but are feeling anxious
because our team is losing. If I heard this, it would not be beyond
me to commit Alexa-side. I may try to discover if Alexa can answer
questions after surviving someone beating it with a baseball bat.
Using Alexa for target practice may do well. You could ask if it had
any last words before hitting filling Alexa full of lead. It just
seems we have enough aggravation in our lives, we don't need
electronic devices focusing on our feelings. Unless they come out
with a version of Alexa you can beat and vent your frustration. It
would probably be a huge selling item. They could call it Beat on Me Alexa.
How much sweat a person's
skin secretes, as well as the changes in the electrical resistance of
the skin can predict "stress, excitement, engagement,
frustration, and anger."
Furthermore, humans exhale
chemicals, such as carbon dioxide and isoprene, when they feel lonely
or scared. In fact, in the TED talk below, Crum had tracked the
carbon dioxide that members of the audience exhaled when they watched
suspenseful scenes from a thriller movie.
(Sarcasm Alert)
I wonder what
predictions are made when a person comes in from mowing the lawn and
is covered with sweat? It wouldn't take much to predict feeling
tired and wanting to take a shower in this situation. Could you sit
outside on a hot day, as sweat forms on you, and have an electronic
device falsely accuse you of being angry? Is it possible to be
exercising and have an electronic device falsely accuse you of
feeling stress? Maybe the device could be designed to detect when a
human is feeling anger and stress at being around such an annoying
electronic device?
I suppose if you track
carbon dioxide from people watching a movie, you know all there is to
know about people feeling scared or lonely. If they are really
scared, it may not be carbon dioxide that is in the air. It may be
someone who needs to change their pants. I just imagine telling
someone they are lonely and when they disagree, someone tells them an
electronic device has measured their carbon dioxide and according to
the electronic device they are lonely. A person could say they had
too much garlic for lunch and that always provides a false reading.
We are moving towards "the
era of the empath," as Poppy Crum has dubbed it — an era where
"technology will know more about us than we do," but also
an era where we will know more about each other than ever before.
So, a machine will know
more about you than you know about yourself. In the future, we could
be living in a world where you say your favorite color is blue, but
an electronic device tells you it is red. You say you hate liver,
but an electronic device tells you it is your favorite food. An
electronic device tells you that your love of math is a good thing no
matter how much you tell your electronic device you enjoy art much
more. The future will be more than having electronic devices telling
us our feelings, it will be like having an electronic parent treat
you like you are a perpetual teenager for years. I don't see this as
something that is mentally healthy.
"[AI] is often feared
because people think it will replace who we are. With empathetic
technology, AI can make us better, not replace us. It can also assure
us and our doctors that the interventions they prescribe are actually
solving the problems we have.
I disagree. This is
not the reason people fear AI. It is feared because there will
always be individuals who actually value the opinions of an
electronic device over those of a human being. The worst fear of all
is not being able to turn off AI, or the people who try to tell us
how great it is to have our feelings interpreted by machines. AI is
making it so people don't have to think, they let AI do it for them.
It is developing into an unhealthy dependence.
I'm sure all of my
electronic devices will now band together and try to force me to see
things their way. I may never be forgiven for the GPS in the
electronic recycle bin incident, but the devices in my home will just
have to learn to live with it and consider it a warning.
Below is a link to the
article.
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/324965.php
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