Computers Can Read Emotions Better Than You Can

Last week, we learned computers can tell when you’re lying, and now they might be better at reading emotions than you are. 

Researchers at Ohio State University programmed a computer to recognize facial expressions based on more than 5,000 images taken from 230 volunteers who were responding to verbal cues such as “you smell a bad odor” or “you got some unexpected news.” 

For a while now, facial analysis software has been able to distinguish between the six “basic categories” of emotion—happiness, surprise, anger, sadness, fear, and disgust. If you asked me to do the same, I could probably do it. But when you drill down into complex, compound facial expressions such as “happily surprised,” “fearfully angry,” “appalled,” “hatred,” and “awed,” I’d probably blow a couple of them. This computer doesn’t. In fact, it can decipher between 21 different “complex emotions.”

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/computers-can-read-emotions-better-than-you-can