Device warns you if you’re boring or irritating.
The “emotional social intelligence prosthetic” device, which El Kaliouby is constructing along with MIT colleagues Rosalind Picard and Alea Teeters, consists of a camera small enough to be pinned to the side of a pair of glasses, connected to a hand-held computer running image recognition software plus software that can read the emotions these images show. If the wearer seems to be failing to engage his or her listener, the software makes the hand-held computer vibrate.
I’m curious what you’re supposed to do AFTER the device has told you that you’re boring your listener to death. Start juggling? Make weird noises? Sadistically continue, ignoring the vibrating device, eager to find out just how tolerant some people can be? Obviously this is not a tool that should fall into my hands, but seriously, they should consider programming some social cues into the hardware to offer alternatives to a conversation about “How I organized my sock drawer this morning by color, and how tomorrow I will do it by style”.