Episode 32 · 37:30
Exploring AI, Mood Meter and Dreams: Unlocking the Secrets of Emotion Recognition
Dan and Tom connect mood meters, dreams and emotion-recognition AI in a conversation about naming what is happening inside us. Better emotional vocabulary can create distance from a reaction; technology might help reveal patterns that are hard to notice in the moment.
They remain cautious about reducing complex feelings to labels, scores or confident automated conclusions.
The useful bits
What to take with you
- A more precise emotional vocabulary creates more options than simply feeling ‘good’ or ‘bad’.
- Tracking moods can reveal patterns when it is used for curiosity rather than judgement.
- Facial or voice signals do not explain the context behind an emotion.
- AI observations should begin a conversation, not close one with a diagnosis.
Watch the conversation
The original episode.
Full conversation
Transcript
Transcript generated from YouTube captions. Dan/Tom speaker attribution is AI-assisted and may occasionally be incorrect.
Foreign [Music] we've changed our editing um so it's like one person at a time and that means that basically when I take a sip from the mug and you don't see me because I'm not speaking so I need to speak and also have the mug so um unless you tell me so I could post do it just you silently sipping as I'm talking what do they do is it that s um AR or whatever it is correctly you just hear.
Me sipping a drink so you know if you want to subscribe to our Insider account then basically we'll do a slow sipping of drinks for you to enjoy to relax you so um I had a dream of tired last night do you have a dream of people that have passed away and they turn up in your dreams and you hug them in your dreams or you or you I do remember one time I basically cried in my dream and I didn't.
Cry in real life I cried in my dream that's the only time where I get to show that kind of emotion it seems nice and I do cry in real life but I don't know if I've seen people pass away in dreams not normally in dreams I find that people tell me off so even if they did password I don't think I'd want to see them yeah tell me I'll feel my dream it was like super Vivid as well so it must have been.
That I woke up again and I basically saw him like popping he had a real cool slick looking uh like haircut and everything and I was like oh it's good to see you and like you hug somebody in your dream you know I'm sure there's some psychological um like release or or like relaxing feeling that you get when you get to um resolve that's the word I'm looking for when you get to resolve something right if you've not been able to say bye or.
Whatever you get to resolve it in some sort of a dream mechanism um which then is is almost it's not the same but it's almost the same um in some ways but yeah so that's um it's always good to have dreams like that positive dreams and not like nightmares are you still having nightmares um I've not had any recently which is good I think I've been sleeping better but I think that's because um it's Megan's half term so we're not.
Needing to have the six o'clock alarm which is 6 a.m yeah I do find dreams are an interesting space for one um I remember someone used to say like before going to bread pray that you are given ideas in your dreams um and like pray for like oh give me a million pound idea or we can go to bed and then your subconscious works on it um but I was thinking about like you know some of the same ideas or same.
Concepts come from what if like the past version of yourself would come and say hi to you or the pre or the future version of yourself comes and say hi to you what would you do um because obviously it was my birthday um a couple days back and I was thinking like um now I'm 33 what would what would like 35 or 37 year old or 40 year old damn come back and tell 33 year old Dan so.
While I'm saying what I think is for me like what would what would you say for you because for me I think broadly speaking comes down to like um be like less concerned about opinions and be less concerned about um like just stuff and more risk taking so like don't worry that things aren't quite perfect because overall overall it works out um so even though there's a bad moment or a hurtful moment or a sad moment like overall it works out I'm not sure if I.
Shared as well um how like um I know I'll hold the emotion remind me of the emotion thing in a minute but yeah what would your like future versions say to to you um and then I would probably trust your gut because I don't know what my future version would necessarily look like I think my Journey's been interesting in the sense that I don't think I'd ever been able to predict 80 plus percent of the stuff that I've.
Got up to yeah um through like job experiences or volunteering or people I've bumped into or whatever so it's quite difficult to say everything will work out in the end or whatever because for me right now how things would work out would be very different to the Future so it's more like be present trust your gut and then through that things will work out rather than things will just naturally work out yeah it makes sense because I think.
Being present is also something that probably come back and tell myself as well um because there's so much again depending on where we live you might feel a different pressure right so for me in London there's a little bit more like of a cultural pressure to be like on the go and also because of our age demographic there's a little bit more like if you're not a CEO by 25 then you're in trouble right so there are different pressures from where.
You sit and um yeah I think it's always a good um it's a good perspective exercise to be like what would you come and tell yourself right yeah the other thing I was thinking about is um emotions how I heard somewhere I'm not sure if I said it last week but um you shouldn't categorize emotions as good and bad you should categorize them as uncomfortable emotions and comfortable emotions because otherwise you demonize um like oh you you might say oh it's bad.
To be sad when actually sadness is a is a it might be uncomfortable but from a processing perspective a good thing to do like trauma might be a bad thing but if you think of it as negative then you'll never basically process it right you'll never get up to the face of it and process it through hmm yeah it's like the book that I've been reading recently about um permission to feel I think it's called and it's basically talking about the.
Mood meter for those that are watching will see me put an iPad and it's basically what zone are you in so you've got energy levels on one side and then you've got pleasantness so that's basically what you're talking about is this opposite to you or can you see this no I can read it perfectly fine so it's basically four squares rad yellow green and blue and each of them are a scale so depending on where you are you're either at the top or the top left.
Top right bottom left bottom right when a second image gives you more wordings for those different areas so that breaks down the four into like six smaller boxes for each of the four which gives you more emotions right a great Mouse it's nine oh quick maths uh no is it oh yeah as in like six across that's like it is too early for maths but um yeah I was in like there's now multiple boxes here so it is an interesting squid going.
Back to your pleasantness there's also pleasantness but then there's also energy levels so you might have a quiet energy which brings either a calmness or a sadness or you might have a high energy which is like joyfulness or anger or rage as we've talked about the Pod before and we're working basically so um from the agency perspective we've been slowly moving into products so Insider if you don't know what Insider is it's basically the home of unreleased music where music artists to can create.
Sustainable living through subscriptions and their fans subscribing to their music and so they can release demos behind the scenes um unreleased tracks they can be pre-releases as well um so that's one product the second product is our to-do list that we're working on and what's what's special about the to-do list why are we creating a to-do list I think it's I've never found an app for me that works of juggling tasks but also encouraging reward whilst completing tasks but also helping you not get stuck.
On a task that either is too difficult because you've given too much of a vague comment or unless you're physically stuck because something is um out of your control so it's bringing a bit more clarity of ownership of where's the ownership pin it's that ownership and carry on say you're getting stuck of I'm stuck and I don't really is it my problem or someone else's spot or whatever and sometimes you overthink it and then actually it's something completely out of your control.
And you've wasted time and energy that you could have just gone stuck on this because of this done file it out as if you sort of getting out of here out tray or whatever inbox and the reason why that's um interesting is because um if anybody's familiar with an organization called access to work which is a governmental Department of the Department of work and pensions is it um they basically assist um companies employers with technology software and equipment to help employees.
Be as efficient as they possibly can um given that they have some sort of um kind of particular need to help them with so they they shift off a bunch of task tracking or task management software they do um transcribing stuff they do screen readers they do all sorts of stuff right so if we can build something that basically sits into that remit we could potentially sell it into access to work and have it cheaper because access to.
Work sell or promote other applications that are like hundreds of pounds so if we could sell something was better slightly better price range then hopefully that could be a better alternative to suggest rather than having access to work spending all this money so it's reimbursed to you but if you can have the government spending less money then that's a good thing right so they can spend it on um even greater impact because we're taking the same impact but a lower cost kind of.
Level I'm actually um really excited about it so um because there's a really good need for it and a remit for it so I think it'll be interesting to see one because we're playing with it because how are you finding playing with it right now yeah it's good I think I think I always expect having an idea is if you'll have like a dump of 200 motivation to run on and get it done but I think that's one thing I've.
Noticed is even though you've come up with an idea you're sort of in a tussle of is this an idea that's going to work or is it like the past that you might try to implement an idea but it's not quite worked so actually there's this sort of half Shadow Boxing happening in your brain that you can't fully 100 go in so it's like okay what is just one small step that I can just push it a little bit forward I don't need 200.
Motivation to get it done um I just need to what is the next thing so what I've been doing is doodling more um so getting the print screens putting them in figma if figma jump stuff and they're literally just doodling on top and then going back to the designs to then edit the designs and that is enough just to break it down to not feel like I'm always at a a computer um with the keyboard and stuff and using.
Sort of my weaker skills rather than oh actually I could do a little on it just to get the idea across to myself to then design it yeah that that makes sense and then um the other thing is kind of like the emotional tracker so you want to share what like some of your thoughts around that and what you're kind of putting together on that side yeah I half thought it might be both in one but I think you've gone and created.
It slightly separately but I guess well this is where it's a conversation both so I guess it might just flashing that out and at the end of the day it's it's taking that mood meter idea of going what zone are you in because you might not really know the different words or how to even communicate because that's one thing I've noticed with um understanding emotion you'll know if you've got high energy low energy or if you like the feeling or don't like the.
Feeling that's quite simple so then when you Zone in to okay you're in one quarter of a box and then you're like okay that one quarter then splits into nine different words that then helps you communicate is there a way of you logging that on a either I don't know if it's just start of the day end of the day or maybe even just before every task to be like oh my mood is slowly improving or my mood is.
Declining because actually I'm doing loads of jobs that I don't like to see if we can do more of a task management via emotion yeah it's just completely opposite that normally it's task via mindset of I need this done so I'm going to do it if I like it or not but I'm like I'm wondering if you could go more there I guess it's probably more better for Creative people or maybe in your if you can't suck off your work or have enough.
Money is more of an evening how do you follow the rhythms of okay you've got high energy so actually you're gonna go and Hoover the house because it's getting you walking about everywhere and now you've got low energy so now you're gonna go and do some art because you can focus to then help you just do the things that you want to do um with a bit more ease with an idea of taking you on that journey of knowing.
What you're feeling when is it reoccurring to hopefully be a more preventative route to like anxiety depression and stuff like that so basically you would have a um some sort of a hey how are you feeling you would say I like I like the idea of saying that it's like you're you feel a color you feel a particular color because then there's less need for interpretation and translation AKA I assume that generally speaking people know what feeling red is.
And people know what feeling like blue is and people know what feeling like um kind of Green is right um and yellow if we put in or orange um and then it would be like a color range and then you would say the intensity because I think the other thing that people forget is like cool if you are feeling Rad or angry to what degree are you feeling angry you might be only feeling like it angry and like a.
Number two which is like cool and then actually it would be really interesting if it was like cool so you're feeling angry well we've looked through your task list and we've we think that this is a creative task which will basically be good to do when you're angry because it'll be like you just want to be creative for example um and yeah it's all about knowing yourself I think one of the biggest um like features that will be the most.
Value though is if you shared your emotion tracker or mood tracker with somebody else so then they could basically provide an additional support for you if you weren't always speaking to somebody and you were like oh I see the Tom's track to Red so let me go and chat to him or like oh he's tracked a red and it's eight so like let me go and try oh like he's tracked red and it's two well that's okay right like you you.
Might like self self soothe in that perspective um especially for like families and kids because um I guess kids um take a bit of time to like understand their own emotions um let alone even adults take time to understand their own emotions right yeah and it stops those people from going how is your day and then you're like you just remembered the last thing that you did that you might have went by a shop to get a chocolate bar so you're like.
Yeah it was a good day when actually you might have been Furious and angry all day to then sadness then you buy a chocolate bar because you're sad and then now you're happy because you've got a chocolate bar it's sort of yeah picture of your emotional journey of a day and we and I feel like we might have am I either having Deja Vu right now or we did mention this on the last podcast but yeah I think the tracking of it over.
Time you'd then be like cool so I've been angry basically for seven days and it's not let up and I'm still a level 10. maybe I should kind of like do something about it you know so it's like all the like the preventative because we I think we probably mentioned last time about the importance of like emotional health uh first which then can be a preventative measure over Mental Health so that's kind of like an interesting like angle did you ever hear the um.
The thing when like a kid is having a tantrum uh the best thing to do is basically mimic them because that is the quickest way for them for them to understand the you understand them so if they're crying and kicking and stuff if you do exactly the same then that like resonates rather than trying to calm them down and also probably rather than like hugging them because you want to like first relate then the second action can be whatever.
It is right but the first is like how do you help a kid understand that you like get them or maybe you should also cry right and then you'll be like oh cool my parents crying I'm crying there's a Synergy and then it like clicks them out of it to be like what's going on here and then you'd be like do you want to hug and I'm like cool you wanna go up like you know whatever the secondary.
Action is I've never seen that in motion as such yet but I'd like to see parenting top tips from uh non-parents yeah non-parently top tips well ultimately before you get into a stage you always have to research it right so before you get married you read about marriage before you get engaged or whatever push a kid over let them cry and then you can cry next and see it works yeah that's one way of crying outside of your dreams.
Yeah don't worry social experiment you know as long as you shout social experiment everywhere then it'd be like acceptable and to be doing things to test it out but yeah I think it's um I'm looking forward not to kind of use this as a um like a a scientist lab of some sorts but just to be like yeah I think it's I think parenting now is going to be so different than it was previously because there are more there's more wisdom there's more.
Understanding there's more psychology there's more everything and all that information is accessible but then there's sometimes too much information because psychologists writers all they always need to come up with their new angle right because isn't there somebody saying now hey don't care about calories what was that did you watch that thing like everybody needs to come up with their thing and a lot of the time confrontation or something negative will get you more more attention right I think the difficulty.
Thing is is like let's say for example food and how people view food eighty percent is probably correct to some degree but what about those 20 of people that counting calories or not counting calories or eating bread loses away was it games wait for other people I think it's those more intricate personal one-to-one touches it's like having a one-to-one personal trainer over having like a yeah and I think that's what we're it feels like that's where the world is.
Going a little bit more of a like a the only things I could think about food wise is like a Subway model of your picking your toppings compared to like a McDonald's of you're picking off their menu okay now you can tweak stuff and go actually I don't want XYZ in my burger to make it a little bit but they make it sort of a little bit more difficult to customize it to make it simpler for them um rather than going through it imagine.
If you went through a Subway process with your mind through your emotions for you work through your finances or whatever it'll probably come out completely different to friends family or whatever which is completely fine rather than a catch-all of G1 Burger or a hot dog which I think that was more like Primary School food options this or this and those year two options or starve but now obviously there's like vegetarian vegan there's fish options there's the personalization yeah the.
Personalization mechanism has gone like Nth Degree thanks to things like AI there was even like um people pronounce it Nvidia don't they or in the video and Nvidia uh had this um so they're basically a um a graphics card or like um gpus are they like I think they're all sorts of um computer hardware basically and they were showing a computer game where somebody walked into a bar and you were able to speak with the character behind the bar and the character behind.
The bar was all driven by AI so his reactions and stuff were triggered by what he was saying and also what he was hearing so you could speak to the character behind the bar and they would instantly answer back uniquely to what you say um I I was thinking so there's two routes that you go down this thing right one you can use it in a good way and one you can use it in a bad way so we can.
Talk about like dating models right AI models and dating um like replicas um and uh virtual people which is one way of personalizing personalizing basically connection and then the second way is like if you could programmatically give um characters in like a historical scene and you put on your headset or you put on your game you basically chatting with you know Martin Luther King or Henry VII or you know anybody of a famous ish or historic ish um kind of like scope then.
You could build a historic scene and have that as the interaction of like learning about um the world wars or whatever by like going into a situation into a particular like escape room type thing where you're speaking with the characters which are all AI generated so you can ask them questions like oh how many wives did you happen it's like oh I had you know and it's able to answer like very specifically to what you're asking it um I think I'd be really cool like.
Historical tool but then yeah the flip side of these people getting married to AIS is like personalization gone a bit crazy because computers are always going to be better ah personalizing because it can show more empathy it can show you know a greater understanding than than a human can more consistently all the time because there is no um energy up and down right like there is no uh yeah there is no emotional state for itself so it can always be.
There to assist and help but then the next question is like how do we as Christians use that oh like what does the church do with all this stuff did you see the Jesus stream do you see that stuff no I don't know so someone's deep faked this Jesus character which is basically this guy doing this a lot and speaking and every time it's a twitch stream every time people ask Jesus questions in the comments it will answer.
The questions um based on obviously the knowledge that it's been given around the Bible and stuff and it also has contextual knowledge to understand that hey you know cat size 22 thanks for asking the question like you've also asked questions about you know is it okay to you know blah blah blah and it can recite what questions that person has asked or it's like oh thanks cat size 22 you've uh you've asked questions um similar to you know Snake Eyes one.
One or whatever it is and it's like listing off these names and then they're saying it's basically saying stuff um and it's a way of people engaging with Christianity in uh like in your own setting in your own home and asking it questions and stuff now I put it on in my like small group which is just my midweek group that we have and people were so fascinated with it it was just like on for ages and it's just going through.
Like answering all these questions that are being raised um and it's one way of just like introducing any subject or any topic for it to be interrogated and and kind of asked and challenged in a way more engaging way so just imagine if that was like a you know a history lesson that that's the only thing that I can kind of or even the science lesson right or a biology lesson or anything if we're all in these kind of like virtual.
Environments where we're able to ask um particular people about um things then maybe that would be way more engaging and then it's like well you're not limited by the teachers understanding of the teacher's knowledge in that moment so then the people that are really interested they could ask those questions and people that are not interested they don't need to ask those questions um but yeah I think that's the future very interesting I think it's just it's that difficulty.
Of knowing how do you I guess where does the power then go to because in the past it's probably always with the teachers because they were the only ones that can read or whatever and then obviously now everyone can read and get information it's like cool but now let's say AI can even recite stuff and things it's like will it be like ah I've spotted that you've joined this membership with your credit card the last two weeks or whatever it's like.
Then it goes the extreme way the other way of oh you've been joining a live chat that you pay for because then it makes you feel like you want connection but this is the way getting connected or whatever it's going how would you be able to guard rail I guess regulate but then the difficulty is is are you then handing over the power to okay instead of the president's got power it's the regulator that takes control of the most powerful AI systems.
That people are listening to um which is interesting but yeah what are you going to say about Elon Musk um so on the education thing the whole like kids working in teams to solve problems is a really interesting um methodology or approach on education which I think makes sense um and real life problems because I I remember there was this um I used to work at a digital agency where the accountant was an old maths teacher and he said like.
He used to make maths really interesting so he was like cool Pythagoras why the heck do you need Pythagoras like I don't recall but he was like if you buy a wardrobe and you're trying to fit it through a door you need to know Pythagoras to get it through the door so he would like rationalize all these um theories into like usable actionable things so yes you're gonna buy a you're gonna buy at some point as as an adult I'm gonna buy some Ikea.
Furniture or you're going to try and move some furniture so let's use Pythagoras to figure out if we can move this sofa into the Next Room through this door or whatever it is I think that's so more like way more interesting as like a concept um and um yeah it makes it more makes it more real and then the the other thing I'll say the negative side of AI is there's a company in China that basically has developed a facial recognition software.
That if you hell if you're holding up a banner like protesting and it basically snaps your faces and then sends those faces to the government or sends the faces to the police and also because they have like a social credit system um in the sense of like if you perform well we'll give you more social credits and if you perform badly we'll give you less credits it'll be attached to their Wii uh WeChat accounts which basically is their.
Um it's they do everything that you reach out yeah it's WhatsApp but they also do their banking or and they pay so they pay for stuff through WeChat it would be attached to that and they would instantly be able to close down your account because they see you holding a poster of like we don't like what the government is doing or like end lockdowns or whatever whatever so there's definitely The Matrix side of things yeah yeah that's why it's.
Important to like get in at the ground level to understand this stuff so that you can demand the right guard rails otherwise the people at the top will put guard rails for their benefits right hopefully not but you know so it's it's very very interesting the um Nvidia guy in the speech sorry I'm running hot the Nvidia guy in his speech to some University students I'm not sure if it was in Taiwan but um he was like um.
Saying that um his like final closeout sentence was like um don't walk run if you are hungry you'll run for food and if you're not hungry then you are the food so you've got to run because you are the food he will have said it in a way more succinct way but nonetheless run like which I thought was funny and he then tied that in to like run with eggs sharing this yeah yeah it was like it would have been funny if he did right.
Yeah that would have been his accent mode like run yeah you missed it yeah that's one way to like solidify something you'd also put probably put people into panic because he's running off the stage in that way but um yeah I think it's it's really it's such a cool time to be alive um with all these advancements of technology and stuff and that we are aware of them and can utilize them in positive ways to bring about positive change.
Um like one of the biggest things is like you know the advancements in being able to solve illnesses or or um conditions because we can run um what do they call it like experiments of like a higher degree because we've got AI that can kind of like um do a bunch of um protest types of things I spotted that the other day that um they figured out a cure with the power of AI I think it was on the news.
The other day which was quite cool I think it was like a quite complex one because that's the thing you just Chuck it let the computer do the heavy lifting and yeah it is quite cool if they come up with loads of different medicine but then obviously it's difficult because then if pharmacies found out that oh one pill cures you for 20 years is like oh could you collapse a whole industry with the power of AI at the same time so yeah and.
Hold it to Ransom right because one you've come up with these new things that do um eradicate diseases which you then put a price on versus yes the um everything's always a money game because pharmaceutical companies are all private so they're all driven by shareholder value which means that they want to make more money so it's always a difficult thing well yeah AI is very fascinating and I'm glad that I'm not on the scared Spectrum I'm on the like let's engage with this so you.
Don't need to be scared because you understand that and you understand that the full breadth of the impact of the negative side so then you can kind of like put in the guardrails and figure out what you want to like stand for and stuff it's always about engaging with it but what would you say going back to the church and the Jesus thing what would you say for like um people using that because you could write a preach using AI does that then.
Lose its impact or not yeah I'm not entirely sure because it's one of those things that I think it probably diminishes the power of teaching but I would say it probably doesn't diminish the power of let's say like pastoral care because I think the difference thing is is with AI you can say um what is the main point about Genesis do you preach on that very very specific and very succinct it will do a way better job than me.
But if it was like how do you help this person through grieving and they don't know how they're feeling so you sort of have to read their body language well it's not quite got there until it can unless there is something out there already until it can read the tones of your voice and your body language and that type of thing unless you know you really well and have perfect words then fair enough you can be like I'm struggling with grief from a.
Sadness point of view how would you get me out of it with a six month plan then it might help you in that regards but I think there's more of a journeying pastoral care side that I'd say probably doesn't get removed quite the same as let's say teaching or even evangelism because being able to feel like you're speaking with Jesus that's just interesting like how do you just make it church just generally more interesting and and more engaging Savers.
Doing just the same thing that we've done for many years yeah so that's the thing I think people are genuinely interested in sort of new ideas and stuff like that and conveying things in different ways like the church nearly had a heart attack when people used to bring guitars and pianos in but now it's like it makes sense to have that but really it's like why are we bringing other stuff in like DJ sets or loot pedals or whatever why.
Do we have to stop at the piano but that's the thing it's just going what is around there and how can you just be creative with the the tools that that's around you and the challenge is like going back to the comments that we said about personalization the challenge is when you're speaking to a room of people there's so much nuance and um you've come in you've come into a room with some sort of experience you've come into the room with probably like.
You know you rush you you're not really focusing so I wonder if future is you walk into a room there's a hundred VR headsets you plug it in you say how you feeling today and whatever and then it can basically give you a 10 minute video generated preach which is like perfectly based on your learning style your personality and then you would be like cool I'm I basically am encouraged I know how to be a better person you go.
Out into the world like is that going to be the future is in all this personalization because it doesn't necessarily um diminish the uh it doesn't I I don't know I guess it doesn't diminish the um the kind of the feel-good factors and the and the emotions you can feel emotions through it you can feel encouraged by stuff I guess it's the it's the spirituality aspect that it can't necessarily um reenact but it can trigger I think it can trigger a.
Um like an encounter by surfacing stuff right surfacing stuff in a particular way that's all about bringing a sense of encouragement to you but yeah it's it's going to be really interesting and ultimately it's about not being afraid and engaging with it as as we've always said engage with new stuff um yeah wrestle with it and figure it out a bit so get running yeah and this is where we run off the podcast yeah I was like I'm Gonna Knock a bunch.
Of stuff over and I'll have to go I'm gonna have to come back and press stuff anyway until next time keep hammering those nails and running thank you foreign.