An investigation into data scraping to discover our emotions while we’re online by PassW0rd radio for Future Intelligence has discovered the widespread use of intimate surveillance technology by ‘Big Tech’ companies and prompted calls from experts for regulation.
The techniques, which range from online real-time voice analysis to the widespread use of facial-recognition technology and emotion detection software are designed to allow technology companies to infer our moods, an all-important factor in buying decisions. Happy people buy more than people who are depressed, lonely, or bad-tempered.
The monitoring technology can also determine from our emotional reactions whether we like particular products or political opinions effectively turning us into emoticons that can be very effectively mined for responses related to our web searches.
In a series of interviews with leading industry experts and investigators, including the world famous Massachusetts Institute of Technology privacy advocate Professor Sherry Turkle, Dundee University AI voice analyst guru Chris Reed Professor of Computer Science and Philosophy at the University of Dundee and AI facial recognition whistleblower, Noah Levenson, PassW0rd has pieced together a data gathering web designed to catch our data and emotions for it’s ‘Emotional theft‘ programme.
Battle for our wills and wallets
According to Professor Turkle use of the technology is the latest development in a dangerous trend that is seeing people being locked into a dangerous technological embrace that could have an impact for our ability to exercise free will because we are not aware of the extent that our emotions are being manipulated.
“The commercial interests that have created these machines have seen a tremendous business opportunity and figuring out, how can I sell you more.
They’re analysing what you look at on screen so they can send you more of it, along with the ads. You’re being filtered. Your news is being filtered by them, what you see today is being filtered.
“It’s not the machines doing this, it’s the companies and the policies behind the machines. I think we have to get straight to who we’re fighting. This is a fight that consumers can win,” said Turkle, Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at MIT who has just published her latest book ‘The Empathy diaries’.
Big tech wants your empathy
According to FI’s research, the companies are seeking to establish an empathetic bond with people using internet technology to gain a trusted position with the public using the monitoring technology that ultimately seeks to deliver information to give big tech’s commercial customers insight.
“If you can identify what opinion people might hold, that’s really useful. So knowing that they really like your toothpaste is an important thing, knowing that they really like your competitor’s toothpaste is also a really important thing. What fascinates me is how you move from knowing what people think to why they hold the opinions they do. That, I think is really revealing. And you can see there the commercial value as well,” said Professor Chris Reed.
Professor Reed, like Professor Turkle says that the ethical issues raised by technology that maps your emotions do need investigation and regulation.
“There seem to me to be some fairly serious ethical issues with interpreting people’s on the fly discourse with emotional control. There’s some challenge around the ethics of what what’s reasonable there.
“I think in principle, regulation is is going to improve things but my instinct is it’s going to be an extremely hard area to police. It’s part of a broader regulation piece. I don’t think that any any government has got a clear route to understanding how it should be regulated yet because it’s such a fast moving target.”
