MIT Develops Computer Social Coach To Coach Kids Socially Desensitized By Computers

[Initech]

One of the more pernicious effects of constant communication through technology is the magnified anxiety over a system failure when people manage to talk face-to-face: a limp handshake, a joke that doesn’t land, an awkward pause, a collision with a doorway. There’s the knowledge that, in different circumstances, the blunder might have been deleted before hitting “send.” Technology-enabled tendencies like revision, evasion, retraction, and a sense of familiarity that eludes intimacy, have come to feel as natural as the mechanics of an in-person chat. In what should have been foreseen as an obvious twist, a team at M.I.T. has developed technology that can help people perfect their human-interaction skills.

The program is called MACH, or “My Automated Conversation coacH.” A computer-generated advisor-bot—either a dark-haired woman with steely blue eyes or a Midwestern-looking fellow with glasses, both wearing the same black T-shirt, gray sweater, and black blazer outfit—simulates a conversation. Using a standard web camera, MACH scans facial expressions, listens carefully to patterns of speech, and reads behavioral cues. As you speak, the robo-coach will attentively nod its head, as if it’s hanging on your every word. “It smiles when you smile,” M. Ehsan Hoque, who led the research, said. “It gives you the feeling, ‘Hey, this software is listening to me.’”

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/08/a-machine-that-teaches-people-how-to-talk.html

You know the old saying what goes around comes around!

[valerief]

1. Oy vey!

[Ilsa]

2. Oh, the irony. nt