China is home to a growing market for dubious “emotion recognition” technology

[techietraveller84]

They've come up with a method to make sitting in a classroom more miserable than before: the Classroom Care System. It's an “emotion recognition” program that identifies each student’s face and analyzes their behavior.

More and more, China's recipe for success appears to be the technological control of its residents, "for their own good." But as I think about students sitting in their classroom, knowing that every frown, fart, and eye roll is recorded, analyzed, then sent to teacher and parents as a weekly report, I wonder how students will be left with any personality, creativity, or even hope.  https://restofworld.org/2021/chinas-emotion-recognition-tech/

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Every second, the surveillance cameras installed in each classroom at Niulanshan First Secondary School in Beijing snap a photo. The images are then fed into the Classroom Care System, an “emotion recognition” program developed by Hanwang Technology. It identifies each student’s face and analyzes their behavior: a student rifling through their desk might be labeled “distracted,” while another looking at the board would be labeled “focused.” Other behavioral categories include answering questions, interacting with other students, writing, and sleeping. Teachers and parents receive a weekly report through a mobile app, which can be unsparing: In one, a student who had answered just a single question in his English class was called out for low participation — despite the app recording him as “focused” 94% of the time.

 

The Beijing program, first described by journalist Yujie Xue in 2019, has attracted fresh scrutiny in a sweeping new report on emotion recognition technology in China published Monday by Article 19. The British human rights organization found that the dubious tech, while not yet widespread, is being promoted by dozens of Chinese corporations and academic researchers for a wide range of applications, including border screening and prison surveillance as well as assessing student behavior and performance.

 

Emotion recognition technology is based upon a fundamentally flawed idea: that an algorithm can analyze a person’s facial expressions and accurately infer their inner state or mood. In reality, when a person experiences emotions like joy, worry, or disgust, studies have found that they don’t necessarily respond by reacting in consistent, universal ways. While many people may frown if they feel sad, that reaction is also dependent on factors such as culture and the situation and moment.

[Poet]

Analysing your post, I sense that you are upset about this.

[techietraveller84]

I'm not upset about it, but I would be if I was a student, teacher or parent.

 

It's rough enough being a student and a teenager, but having that constant monitoring as well would feel way too constricting. That's just me.

[PatOngo]

9 minutes ago, techietraveller84 said:

I'm not upset about it, but I would be if I was a student, teacher or parent.

 

It's rough enough being a student and a teenager, but having that constant monitoring as well would feel way too constricting. That's just me.

Well just be thankful you are'nt Chinese!

[techietraveller84]

Ethnically Chinese, but educationally American. ????