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31p Will Make Your iPhone Able To Read Your Emotions

by | 30th, October 2013

anorak-emoticonAre you disappointed that your iPhone can’t tell if you’re happy? Well that can be remedied by plugging in 31p of sensors to an iPhone 5S and letting it monitor your heartbeat.

The strategy director of a  chip company – Freescale Semiconductor’s Kaivan Karimi explained how for a fifty cents your device can be trained to know what you’re thinking before you do. Speaking at the Gigaom conference this week in San Francisco, he explained how it’s just about measuring your pulse, and your sweat:

“your device will know you significantly better than you do, or than your loved ones do. This will lead a lot of good stuff.”

Heartrate from emotion is different from heartrate from exercise, Mr Karimi says – so once you have those you can pretty much monitor what a person’s emotions are.

By making a watch that can take readings of the pulse and skin moisture on your wrist, and linking it up to your iPhone, the device will be able to “read your mind”, Mr Karimi said.

“You’re familiar with the concept of subconscious vs the conscious?  There are certain things that you don’t know about. You don’t know why when a certain person enters the room, you feel uneasy. You don’t know why in certain conditions you can’t talk well. But your subconscious knows. And the way the SensorFusion (iPhone software) algorithm works – your device will know. Your device will know you significantly better than you do.”

The new iPhone 5S’s new SensorFusion software makes the iPhone’s sensors easier to access for app developers – meaning there can be many more uses for sensor data in free or cheap apps. It’s going to be big.

Of course, there is the threat of massive privacy invasion.

And that’s before we even get into “smart pyjamas” and the watches that control your car.

In the car example Nissan have already put out a smart watch that assesses whether you are in a fit state to drive based on movement, temperature, pulse rate. If the watch decides you aren’t… it will tell the car to take over, and will drive itself to the side of the road and go no further until your watch allows it to.

Best to make friends with the robots before they become our overlords.



Posted: 30th, October 2013 | In: Technology Comment | TrackBack | Permalink