ERNEST is from an era prior to ubiquitous data collection, so it needs you to help train the Happiness Model™ so it can learn what content makes people happiest.
ERNEST uses computer vision to detect your face, and then reacts to you based on your facial expressions. He’s learning to understand emotions and how various pieces of content can affect your emotional expressions. But while we’re training a Happiness Model™ with ERNEST, how else might this technology be applied despite the good intentions of its creators?
Through ERNEST we hope to open a dialogue around the ethics of gathering the data used to train and validate models, the places bias can creep into these models, the gap between intent and real-world applications of these models, and the tensions around augmenting or automating decision making using imperfect models.
Human and machine's working together to create stories.
Ernest installed in the IDEO lobby.
Ernest installed at CODAME Intersections.
The Ernest interface is an homage to Eliza, an AI bot created by MIT in the 60's.
Ernest tracks faces and recognizes a humans most likely emotions.
A model created to visualize the IDEO lobby install. This model was made by IDEO's production team.
Again with the help of IDEO's production squad, we built out nice podiums for our old school CRT monitors to sit on.
Sean's home slowly filled with CRT monitors.
Sean's DIY converter to put Ernest on our CRT's.
