Have your smile broken down into an algorithm

Smile, you’re on Candid Camera! That was quite the catchphrase many years ago back when I was just a wee lad, and I would dare say that the smiles (most of the time, they end up as laughs) featured in the TV series were genuine if this particular computer system from the bowels of MIT were to analyze them. After all, the folks over at MIT have managed to come up with a particular algorithm that is capable of detecting whether a particular smile is one that is born from the bottom of the heart, while another is forced out due to frustration. For instance, the image above saw the computer correctly identify that the smile on the right is a sign of frustration, while the smile on the left is the real deal.

This particular research into digitizing emotions into a quantifiable manner might just help usher in a new era for computers to be able to assess the emotional states users while delivering the right kind of response. Not only that, it is speculated that those who do have difficulty interpreting expressions of others, in particular those who have autism, are then able to gauge the expressions that one sees with a greater degree of accuracy. To put it in a nutshell, improving face-to-face communication between people is one of the nobler aims of this particular algorithm. [Press Release]

Edwin Kee
Categories: Computers
Tags: mit