philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

Human rights groups demand Zoom stop any plans for controversial emotion AI

PhilNote: the opponents are describing this as a black and white issue, when in fact it is nuanced and there effort to kill it is just as misguided as any effort to implement it without ethical guardrails in place first.

More than 25 human and digital rights organizations including the American Civil Liberties Union, Electronic Privacy Information Center and Fight for the Future sent a letter to Zoom demanding the company end any plans to incorporate emotion AI features in its meeting software. ...

... On Wednesday more than 25 human and digital rights organizations including the American Civil Liberties Union, Electronic Privacy Information Center and Fight for the Future sent a letter to Zoom demanding the company end potential plans to incorporate emotion AI features in its software. The letter comes in response toreporting in Protocol in April highlighting Zoom’s consideration of incorporating AI in its virtual meeting software to detect and analyze people’s moods and emotions. ...

AI-based features for assessing people’s emotional states are showing up in virtual classroom platforms and technology used in vehicles to detect driver distraction, signs of drunkenness and road rage. Behind the scenes, companies that produce synthetic images and video data are supplying raw materials used to train emotion AI and related systems, but sometimes those companies are removed from the end uses of the data they provide.

The validity of emotion AI has been seriously questioned, and often raises ethical concerns. Some research shows the ways people express emotions such as happiness, anger or surprise vary across cultures and situations.  ...

See the full story here: https://www.protocol.com/enterprise/zoom-emotion-ai-aclu-rights