Is "Super-AI-Freud" on the Way? How Far Should Machines with AI Be Allowed to Go?

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A team at Saarland University (Germany) has discovered that certain parts of the body can, in fact, reveal a person's emotional state. What if AI systems could do this even better ...?

Human ear muscles reveal our emotions, as Dr. Farah Corona-Strauss and Sophie Bonnaire have discovered through their research at the “Systems Neuroscience & Neurotechnology Unit” in Saarbrücken and Homburg (Germany). The experts were able to demonstrate, for example, that the ear muscles not only reveal who we’re listening to and how intently, but also how deeply something moves us. And this happens in a fraction of a second. In light of the AI debate surrounding its risks to society, it is imperative to consider what a machine should be allowed to do in the future if it can potentially recognize our emotions better than we can ourselves. Two publications by the team led by Professor Daniel J. Strauss have been released on this topic: The research findings are presented in the “IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing,” and a perspective article in “Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence” defines the concept of “super-emotional intelligence” for the first time.

And We Can Do it After All! Darwin Was Wrong Back Then

“Our ear muscles react immediately to individual events that move us emotionally—for example, to a sound or a face that briefly appears in a scene. This happens in a fraction of a second and is not visually perceptible,” explains Professor Daniel J. Strauss, a neuroscientist and computer scientist. What’s remarkable is that Charles Darwin once declared human ear muscles to be vestigial and, in 1872, denied that humans could express emotions through their ears—a phenomenon he described in such detail in animals. After all, flattened ears indicate fear and anger. Ears that are pricked up signal alertness—as anyone who lives with a dog or cat knows. The researchers from Saarland have now been able to show, however, that this vestigial evolutionary remnant in our heads—the control of the ear muscles—reveals not only who we’re listening to, but also what we’re feeling while doing so. Although we can no longer move our ears, the muscle signal has remained! What Darwin thought was lost has merely grown quieter, Strauss notes.

Exciting Scenes Get your Ear Muscles Going

In fact, during tests, participants unconsciously made tiny ear movements that pointed exactly in the direction toward which they were directing their attention. The researchers were able to demonstrate this response, in part, by measuring electrical impulses from the ear’s rudimentary motor system. In follow-up studies, the group showed that the ear muscles also indicate how strenuous listening is, even when hearing aids were being worn. But if the ear reacts to sounds that are important to us, does it also react to what moves us emotionally? To investigate this, the participants were shown short film clips—both pleasant and unpleasant ones. And within fractions of a second, the more stimulating a scene was—regardless of whether it was beautiful or creepy—the more active their muscles became. The muscle response also matched what the participants themselves reported. These findings also give pause for thought when artificial intelligence is brought into the picture...