Reading Faces examines the direct impact of past research on the development of AI systems; the way in which the past provides contexts which have predisposed people to accept outputs of AI systems as ‘common sense’; how the role of politics and the changing nature of the state have led to the introduction of AI systems and their precursors; how previous technologies led to the acceptance of the introduction of superficially similar AIs; and how the outputs – and biases, such as purported associations between race and criminality – of facial biometrics systems have been determined by the historical nature of the underlying datasets they analyze. Reading Faces approaches these issues within the sweep of Western History – how it has shaped conceptual categories about the application and ethics of AI, and tried to foist those ideas and values on the Global South.This chapter tells the story of the development of affect technologies, that purport to read emotions from facial expressions. The problematic nature of these technologies, especially in the absence of a consideration of the role of context, or intent, will be explored in terms of the theory of expressions as a means for souls to communicate with each other going back millennia but with important modification in Christian thought. Such beliefs can be seen in the foundational research underpinning modern affect AIs.
WISER Seminar Papers
- WISER's TRUST seminar is hosted on-line every Monday afternoon from 16:00 - 17:00 SA time during the teaching semester. Forthcoming seminars are available here, and past events are detailed in our archive.
- Please register on Zoom in advance of the meeting on this link.
- Participants should please read the paper (below) prior to the seminar; it will typically be available by the Friday preceding the seminar.
In this semester, the Trust seminar will explore questions of credit and debt on the African continent. In contrast with the argument that trust and confidence are synonymous (most evident in the Edelman Trust Barometer and the reporting around it), some of the most convincing scholarship argues for the direct association of trust with credit. Other researchers, studying informal African institutions, have found credit everywhere on this continent, but little that can be associated with trust. Some state institutions (like SACCOs in Kenya) and simpler penalties, like efficient bankruptcy laws, seem also to be instrumental in shaping the politics of credit. One key driver of credit systems is a secondary market, which depends in part on institutions and information that derive from (and support) fiduciaries. These are especially important in the contemporary tensions between firm-based and individualised credit systems. The seminar series this semester will explore some of these dynamics, examining how they have shaped the cultures and politics of debt and credit from the precolonial to the contemporary period.
