Daniel McDuff is an 'emotive computing' engineer at MIT. He was named a WIRED2015 Innovation Fellow for his research on teaching machines to better understand humans by recognising our emotions and facial expressions.
In 2011, Daniel collaborated with Affectiva to produce the first world demonstration of large-scale emotion measurement via the Cloud -- using webcams to capture viewers' facial expressions during Super Bowl commercials.
He is also the co-inventor of CardioCam, a method of measuring physiology remotely using just a webcam -- the technology has now been integrated into a successful iPhone app.
Daniel will be speaking on the Main Stage at our flagship event, WIRED2015 on October 15-16. He will take part in the session, "When technology gets ambitious," alongside AI pioneer Antoine Blondeau, AI drug discoverer Niven Narain, antimatter rocket scientist Ryan Weed and Gabor Forgacs, who is growing human organs.
Bringing the WIRED world to life, WIRED2015 showcases the innovators changing the world and promoting disruptive thinking and radical ideas. There will be more than 50 speakers over the two-day event, presenting stories about their work in science, design, business and many other fields.
Can you tell us what you're planning to speak about at WIRED2015?
I'll be presenting insights and results from the main area of my research, which is focussed on emotion measurements, finding ways that we can understand and interpret people's emotions using computers. In order to do that -- because emotions are such a complex and nuanced topic -- we need a lot of data. My work has been collecting a huge database of emotion measurements and essentially I'm mining that database to try to understand how cultures influence how people express themselves. How gender, age, all of these different factors change the way we behave and express emotions.
Is there anything you are hoping to achieve by speaking at WIRED2015? Are events like this important for researchers?
My work is very much at an intersection between the research and actually developing products and interfaces for people to use. The insights and the algorithms that we develop from this data go into an SDK (software development kit) that is available for people to use, and it's really useful to understand how people imagine this could be used. There are so many applications in education and healthcare and in just in everyday life where this could play a role. The discussion about the sort of social impact as well as the potential of the technology is really important. These types of venues are perfect for that type of discussion.
As you continue with your research, do you anticipate resistance from consumers and laypeople who think that it's an invasion too far in terms of how your computer's interacting with you?
That's a great question. It does come up, the idea that computers measuring your emotions can seem intimidating. And, as you mention, slightly invasive. However, the main way I like to think about is that we use emotions in everyday life to communicate with other people, and a lot of our interactions are now happening through devices. We're communicating with people around the world, and a lot of information is lost through impersonal interfaces that don't respond to how you’re feeling.
I think emotions being a part of our interactions with technology will actually allow us to spend less time looking at screens and more time behaving more naturally.
Emotions play a big role in health, and having technology that could help with treatment in conditions like depression would be extremely valuable.
The benefits are there, and we shouldn't be scared of reaching for those good things we can get. It's just all about how it's designed, how we set up social norms around the field.
What does being named as a WIRED2015 Innovation Fellow mean to you?
This type of recognition is great, it really helps raise the profile of the work. I'd say the main benefit is the connections it brings, there are a lot of people who after events approach me about potential applications that the technology could be used for that I haven't necessarily thought about or considered before.
Getting those connections, being able to reach a larger group of people seeing the technology being applied in different settings as a result of these new collaborations or opportunities is really the main benefit.
Can you give us a glimpse of what you think your corner of the WIRED world might look like in five years' time? Do you think emotive computing will be a more widespread tool than it is now?
I think that in five years' time the internet of things will be more of a reality. I see emotion connection between humans and devices as being a really important part of that. I think the things we use can become more connected to each other, but unless they can respond and grow in how they understand us as people, then we'll reach a limit in how useful it can be.
I like the idea that in our homes we'll have devices that can help us live healthier lives, help us care for ourselves and for other people. I see devices capable of measuring our emotions as being an integral part of that.
What do you think are the next big developments in emotive commuting? Do you see any game-changers on the horizon?
On the technology side of things, the computer vision -- computers being able to recognise what’s happening in their surroundings, including facial expressions -- is improving very rapidly. There’s a lot of research around what is known as deep-learning, and I think that's going to drive a lot of applications.
The reason your mobile phone understands what you say by voice recognition so accurately is pretty much all down to deep-learning and the same will affect computer vision. One of the things that has limited building these types of devices and applications has been that the technology wasn’t quite robust enough to work in real life settings. It worked in research, but if you threw it out into the wild it would break down. But now we have a huge amount of data and we can build algorithms that work really robustly in everyday settings.
In terms of industry adoption we’re seeing a lot of people in the healthcare space pick up technology, which is really exciting.
What's next for Daniel McDuff?
I'm really passionate about the idea of being able to deploy this technology on a large scale. One thing that's held research back in the past has been studying small data sets of limited numbers of people, and from that you can only draw certain conclusions about a specific population.
I think there are a lot of advances in computing, in sensing technology that allow us now to do this stuff on larger scales, and that's really important from a science perspective. We couldn't study cultural differences unless we had large populations of people around the world opting-in to be part of our studies, so I really want to push that forward, and that will naturally help improve the technology and also open up new applications for it.
WIRED2015 takes place on October 15-16 at Tobacco Dock in London, E1. Last year's event sold out, so secure your place now. WIRED subscribers save 10 per cent on tickets. We also have a limited number of half-price tickets available for startups and registered charities. For more information or to register, please visit http://www.wiredevent.co.uk/wired-2015.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
