Emotion-Sensing Facial Recognition

1. What is the emerging ethical dilemma all about?

- The emotion-sensing facial recognition is a software that helps detect a
person’s reaction with the application he/she is using. It is said to be helpful
through market research (para malaman kung mabenta yung movie or yung
game), employee performance (para malaman kung lagi bang stressed mga
employees or kaya ba nila yung mga trabaho na binibigay sakanila),
advertising and a lot more.
- The ethical dilemma about emotion-sensing facial recognition is the fact that
the developers of these softwares invade people’s privacies when they use it.

2. What factors or events led to this dilemma?

- the US Transportation Security Administration (TSA) in 2003 began testing a
new surveillance program called the Screening of Passengers by Observation
Techniques program, or Spot for short to detect potential terrorists by
reading their facial expressions and behavior.
- professor of psychology at the University of California, San Francisco, Paul
Ekman, developed a method to identify minute facial expressions and map
them on to corresponding emotions. This method was used to train
“behavior detection officers” to scan faces for signs of deception.
- But when the program was rolled out in 2007, it was beset with problems.
Officers were referring passengers for interrogation more or less at random,
and the small number of arrests that came about were on charges unrelated
to terrorism. Even more concerning was the fact that the program was
allegedly used to justify racial profiling.
- Ekman tried to distance himself from Spot, claiming his method was being
misapplied. But others suggested that the program’s failure was due to an
outdated scientific theory that underpinned Ekman’s method; namely, that
emotions can be deduced objectively through analysis of the face.
- In recent years, technology companies have started using Ekman’s method to
train algorithms to detect emotion from facial expressions. Some developers
claim that automatic emotion detection systems will not only be better than
humans at discovering true emotions by analyzing the face, but that these
algorithms will become attuned to our innermost feelings, vastly improving
interaction with our devices.

3. What are the societal implications of this dilemma?

- People became cautious of their actions and the software they use because
they are scared that a person or a group of people may be watching their
faces and/or reactions to whatever they are doing with the applications.
4. Why is it important to question the moral and ethical issues surrounding innovations in
science and technology?
- Because science and the continuous innovation of our technology can be
dangerous and can cross the line.
- With this example, it can be helpful for the developers or owners to study
whether their application, product or service has satisfied their customers.
Or through facial recognition, they can know who the real criminals are. But
it has crossed a line because these people are invading their consumers’ or
people’s privacies by staring at them for the whole time they are using the
software, without them knowing.

5. In the face of this dilemma, why is it important to study STS?

- It is important to study STS because we cannot just look at these softwares as
something good for the developers, but it can sometimes affect society in a
bad way. Weighing the good and bad is crucial to evaluate whether these
innovations will really help uplift our society. In this case, it may bring good
because it has its own advantages like catching criminals, market research
and for more effective feedbacks, it also has its bad sides like invasion of
privacy without consent, watching a person’s every move and getting
information that a person doesn’t really intend on giving.