Browsing the internet the other day I came across Crystal Knows , an add-on for email that lets you know the best way to talk to people based on their personality. So for example, instead of saying, “Hi Mark, I’m afraid I can’t make our meeting”, if Mark likes the direct approach, Crystal Knows will instead prompt you to say, “Mark, can’t make our meeting.”
What does everyone think of programs like Crystal Knows? It seems we lose a lot of what makes us human (social interaction, general communication skills) and instead wholly dependent on algorithms.
I guess in a way I’d extend this to wondering what others think of Facebook’s newsfeed algorithm, which assumes you only want to see updates from certain people based on previous interactions from them; can hide other friends updates from your newsfeed entirely, and favours congratulatory posts (such as birthdays or milestones). It seems we’re moving towards an era where our social interaction is distilled by a program. What are your thoughts?
Thank you for your post. It was very good. I agree with your views, and I compliment you on your writing and your personality. This is an automated message. Error 497: emotion not found.
My pov on that is we are now in digital age wherein seems everything is possible now in our technology. People can input emotion on the machine. E.g. if you say this xxxx to that person what could be the possible response? Thus, whatever emotional response you think. You can input that in program.
Ah, the age-old question - will algorithms ever be able to understand emotions?? If you think about how humans experience emotion, hormones play a big role, and those have a physical effect on our bodies. Your hair stands up, hands get sweaty, hearts starts pounding. So in that sense, I don’t think algorithms will ever understand emotions the same way humans do, because they don’t have physical bodies. They can probably understand emotions on a computational level though, like “Say that Kate is just like her mother = Kate gets angry”. Heh.
