Emotion Recognition and What Nazanin Andalibi's Research Tells Us about Its Impacts

Emotion recognition is baked into all sorts of software and systems many of us use or experience every day, from video call systems measuring the “mood” at a work meeting, to systems used to gauge distraction at school, or impairment or anger of drivers inside their cars. Despite its increasing proliferation, emotion recognition systems and the data use embedded in them create significant privacy impacts. 

What is emotion recognition? Would fixing inaccuracy problems in these systems alleviate the potential harms they enable? Should emotion related data be recognized as a sensitive type of information along with health financial and other sensitive data? How might policymakers address potential harms of emotion recognition? Dr. Nazanin Andalibi, Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan School of Information, has a lot to say about all this, and she has the research to back it up.

World Privacy Forum Deputy Director Kate Kaye interviewed Dr. Andalibi in June 2024 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. This episode of Privacy on the Ground features music by Old Wave. The Privacy on the Ground intro theme features music by Pangal.