Evaluation of Affective Computing Systems from a Dimensional Metaethical Position

By integrating sensors and algorithms into systems that are adapted to the task of interpreting emotional states, it is possible to enhance our limited ability to perceive and communicate signals related to emotion. Such an augmentation would have many potential beneficial uses in settings such as education, hazardous environments, or social contexts. There are also a number of importan t ethical considerations that arise with the computer 's increasing ability to recognize emotions. This paper will survey existing approaches to computer ethics relevant to affective computing. We will categorize these existing approaches by relating them to different metaethical positions. The goal of this paper is to situate our approach among other approaches in the computer ethics literature and to describe its methodology in a manner that practitioners can readily apply. The result then of this paper is a process for critiquing and improving affective computing systems. 1 Undesirable Scenarios The film Hotel Rwanda describes historical horrors of a sort that have happened more than once,and thus may happen again, although with new technology and new individuals involved. At several times throughout history, one group has tried to perform "ethnic cleansing," and during many scenes of this film people are asked whether they are Hutu or Tutsi's. In the film, those who admit to being (or are exposed as being) Tutsi are carted off, and eventually a million Tutsi's are brutally murdered. Imagine how much more "efficient" this kind of interrogation process could be if the perpet ra tor s could point a noncontact "lie detector" at each person while questioning them about their race (or other unwelcome beliefs.) Lie detectors typically sense physiological changes associated with increased stress and cognitive load (presuming it is harder to lie than to tell the truth). While honesty is a virtue, and we'd like to see it practised more, it is also possible to imagine cases where a greater virtue might be in conflict with it. If such devices became easy to use in a widespread reliable fashion, they will become easier to misuse as well. It is not hard to imagine an evil dictatorship using such a device routinely, perhaps showing up at your home and pointing it at you, while asking if you agree with their new regime's policies or not, and then proceeding to treat people differently on the basis of their affective responses to such questioning. Some work in the Media Lab developed wearable devices that could learn to recognize eight emotional states from a person, one of which was anger [Picard et al., 2001] . While that work was just a prototype, suppose that organizations who ran prisons or punishment services were to refine the system to detect a variety of levels of anger. The infliction of pain often gives rise to anger in the recipient of that pain, and such a device could be coupled with a pain infliction device to bring people to a certain level of torment. While we like to think our civilized society would not stoop to such torture, the recent events at the Iraqi prison Abu Ghraib remind us that our systems are subject to fault. It is not hard to imagine efforts to bolster an over stretched security force with the addition of an electronic interrogator for every suspect, especially when it is believed that the information extracted could save the lives of many others. A hybridization of affect sensing technology and armed robotics could produce a very menacing device. Suppose a weapons engineer were to take a rifle equipped robot and gate its trigger mechanism such that it only fired at people it didn' t know who were expressing anger and fear toward it (some have argued that people fighting on the same side as the most sophisticated technology have no reason to fear it, at least not as much as the enemy has.) Readers may feel that such outlandish devices are the stuff of science fiction and not to be taken seriously. However, with $127 billion in funding going towards future combat systems such as a robot "equipped with a pump action shotgun system able to recycle itself and fire remotely" [St. Amant, 2004] and with an army researcher suggesting "the lawyers tell me there are no prohibitions against robots making lifeor death decisions" [Ford, 2005] it is appropriate to consider what role ethics ought to play. These scenarios might seem remote, and merely hypothetical. Meanwhile there are (perhaps more costly) immediate scenarios of emotional paperclips and other software tools that daily annoy people, elicit frustration and even anger, and pose a costly threat to our productivity, health, and even our performance behind the wheel of a car or truck. In general, our research aims to develop guidelines for affective technologies that will reduce risks of harm to people, and address their ethical concerns. Designers cannot control the ultimate uses of a technology; undesirable uses may occur without any intent whatsoever by a designer. Nonetheless, we think that some designs facilitate certain uses more than others. When exploring possible designs of affective computing systems, it is importan t to confront the harmful potential applications along with the beneficial. While such considerations may not prevent all harmful uses, they can potentially lessen the likelihood of harmful uses. Thus, we desire to influence the design of technologies that maximize the likelihood for beneficial uses, while minimizing the potential for malicious uses. Toward such a goal, this paper seeks to provide a framework for developing ethical questions about affective computing systems. 2 Questions for Designers In trying to assess these moral and ethical decisions, it is useful for designers to ask themselves questions that can help gauge the impact of affective technologies on users. For instance: • "Could a user be emotionally manipulated by a program with the capability to recognize and convey affect? " (this question has also been addressed by Picard and Klein, 2002) • "Should an affective system try to change the emotional state of a user? " • "Would a system that allows surveillance of previously invisible affective signals invade privacy? " In answering questions such as these, a large number of variables come into play. Some philosophies suggest ethical judgements are the result of reasoning and reflection about desires and effects. Still others treat ethical judgements as being the expression of feeling and emotion, having no base in logical or analytical philosophy. What is common among many philosophical approaches is a desire to abstract the core issues away from particulars. We think it is appropriate to take a process of reason and reflection, and will invert this “abstract the core away from particulars” approach and suggest, for the sake of applying ethical theory, the examination of particular dimensions that might bear upon design of ethical affective computing systems. 3 The Social Contextualization of Affective Computing Before proceeding, we will provide some examples of current affective computing systems. Affective computing is "computing that relates to, arises from, or deliberately influences emotion" [Picard, 1997]. In collaborative efforts, we have developed many prototypes of such systems in a variety of use contexts including the systems pictured in Illustations 1 and 2. As such systems approach maturity, the use of affective computing technologies by a wider portion of society seems increasingly likely. However, before such systems are widely deployed, it is importan t to assess what harms and benefits arise from their novel capabilities. We would like to provide the community with heuristics and design guidelines to help avoid designing affective computing systems that could be exploited in harmful or malicious ways. As a star ting point we provide a list of different dimensions that are relevant to affective computing systems. By considering different values for these dimensions, it is our hope that designers can spot different ethical difficulties present in affective computing systems. 3.1 Invasion and Discomfort Designers make a variety of moral and ethical decisions in the development of an interaction technology. In our initial explorations we explored impacts on comfort and privacy [Reynolds and Picard, 2004]. We presented participants with two hypothetical application contexts (music and news recommenda tion) that focused on four emotions (joy, anger, sadness, and excitement). In completing surveys regarding these situations we found that participants reported that such Illustration 1: EmoteMail is an email client that is augmented to convey aspects of the writing context to the recipient. The client captures facial expressions and typing speed and introduces them as design elements. These contextual cues provide extra information that can help the recipient decode the tone of the mail. Moreover, the contextual information is gathered and automatically embedded as the sender composes the email, allowing an additional channel of expression.