It’s Friday: Emotional AI wants to record how that makes you feel, because the future of work is built on emotional connection, which is in turn exploited by your most passive-aggressive colleague who is really looking forward to hearing from you. At your earliest convenience, thx. 

Who’s Watching Me?

Emotional AI is not, sadly (?), an attempt to imbue robots with feelings, but rather tech to record and categorize the emotions of real human beings. And there are a whole raft of companies eager to sell the promise of access to your innermost states of mind. 

You can imagine the marketing and advertising agencies queuing up for that data, and that’s icky enough. But more insidious versions are already in use, like in call centers that use EAI to monitor and correct their employees’ voices and vibes.  

I always feel like somebody's watchin' me

Most of us can sense when our officemate is hangry and it’s plausible you could train software to do the same. But many researchers caution that “there's no consensus among scientists on the definition of specific human emotions, or how you could accurately read them on someone's face.” But that’s not going to stop these companies from giving it a shot! (One has even designed an office chair with biosensors that can tell when employees laugh, for that creepy elf-on-the-shelf feeling, all year long.)

And I have no privacy

Companies claim their tools will eliminate bias (lol!) and will collect data anonymously, but 

Sarah Myers West, the managing director of the AI Now Institute, is skeptical of company claims that EAI is free of bias. "There's no scenario where you can go around making that kind of claim with any rigor … There's so many data streams that are being collected that the anonymization claim really breaks down."

The cherry on this particular dystopian sundae is that EAI tech is both unregulated and often undisclosed to the employees whose heart rates and micro emotions are being cataloged. All of which begs the question, why have humans do these jobs at all?  

– Business Insider

Game, Set, Org

Is it cynical to wonder whether organizations are aware that the future of work, as Loretta Li-Sevilla of HP asserts, will be based on emotional connection, and that’s why they’re eager to get EAI up and running? So they can gain the benefits of optimizing for people’s emotions without engaging with the people feeling those pesky emotions? 

Perhaps! But Li-Sevilla is optimistic that a trio of thoughtfully implemented -sets will retain the human connection that keeps people satisfied and engaged in their work. 

Mindset: The foundation, characterized by emotionally intelligent leadership (presumably those unlikely to install laughter sensors in office furniture) and people-centric workspaces and programs. Transparency and flexibility are key.

Toolset: The stuff employees expect, like tech and workplace tools that are essential for doing their jobs. 

Skillset: Cultivating a balance of soft skills (critical thinking, teamwork) and hard skills, and “reimagining hiring practices to emphasize long-term potential over specific job skills.” 

And finally, Li-Sevilla speaks to this writer’s heartset, in declaring that while AI can and will take over specific workplace tasks, it won’t replace jobs -- or the people who do them.

– Forbes

Reply All or Reply, Nah?

Good ol’ email. It remains great at conveying information (even replacing meetings!), but its real talents lie in being a sublime medium for passive aggression. So many shades of meaning, all possible with the addition or subtraction of a simple punctuation mark! Or of course the many timeworn passive-aggressive phrases that add a dash of je ne sais QUOI!!! to our missives.

When we receive one of these emails, we can of course dive right in with our own “going forward”s and “per our last convo”s, but sometimes you might be inclined to “rise above.*” 

In which case, you might consider not replying! The beauty of the PA email is that if you’re in the right mood, you might believe they didn’t intend to come off that way at all! 

If it’s something that really does have to be discussed, take it out of Outlook and have that conversation in person, which will probably mellow the tone considerably. If you have to reply via email, keep it classy with lots of “I” statements. Or, use our approach: Lots :) of :) smiley :) faces :) and/or exclamation points! 

*to quote a dog owner I once overheard whose pup was tempted by a piece of sidewalk pizza

– CNBC

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See ya next week, 

– The EiT crew at Status Hero 🫡