'Emolytics' i.e. Emotional Analytics tries to understand how a person communicates, verbally and nonverbally. This includes understanding the person's mood and attitude. Based on this information, when the software makes its own interpretations and/or decisions, the concept of Emotion AI emerges.

But Are We Asking Too Much From Algorithms?

The renowned physicist, Dr. Michio Kaku, has very famously predicted that as the decades go by, robots will become as smart as a mouse, then a rat, then a cat, dog and then perhaps, a monkey. By that point, they might become dangerous & even replace humans.

His take on Emotion AI is that emotions are not that hard to program inside a computer. His predictions state that the next generation of the internet is the brain-net. We can already upload simple memories in mice. Now imagine a scenario where eventually an Alzheimer's patient will be given a brain pacemaker; You push a button & memories will come flooding into the patient's hippocampus. The 'Hippocampus', located in the brain's temporal lobe is involved in the formation of new memories & is associated with learning & emotions. Wouldn't that simply be an idealistic future?

So are we asking too much from Algorithms? Dr. Kaku certainly believes we are not. The benefits that this technology predicts is surely insurmountable.

Impact of Emotion AI

Emotion AI is predicted to have a significant impact on customer relationship management (CRM). Getting to know your customer is a critical task on its own. And when your AI does it for you, it's a win-win situation. Personalized services and ad campaigns can be executed with such analysis. Also, emotions drive loyalty. So, your machines understanding core emotions of your customers will only aid your services to them.

Sensing Feeling has deployed advanced IoT sensors in physical spaces that detect human emotions using advanced algorithms. Their mission is to make technology more human. Their product will enable organizations to improve customer experiences.

Lightwave & nViso are two startups pioneering in the field of Emolytics & Emotion AI and have focused on improving customer experiences, even using visual intelligence. Kanjoya is another startup that has a slightly different focus – they focus on the company's workforce & not customers. After all, employee satisfaction has been recognized to be of equal importance as compared to customer service management.

Early signs of Emotion AI can be found in the virtual personal assistants that people use today. This is achieved through NLP and text analytics. Also, facial recognition & machine vision software will make recognizing nonverbal behavior, in real-time, much easier.

But, the advent of Emotion AI brings in a whole host of opportunities as well as challenges. Robots will become self-aware. Of course, this is a prediction for decades or even a century from now. But a host of futuristic sci-fi movies has already given us a picture of how that might look.

Although, as of now, we don't need to be vary of this technology. As I stated above, the benefits of Emotion AI are insurmountable.

Lastly, discussions on Emotion AI remind me of Robert Breault's interesting quote – "Someday a computer will give a wrong answer to spare someone's feelings, and man will have invented Artificial Intelligence!"