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Are human emotions really universal?

Dongria tribal girl
(Odisha, India)
The English word 'emotion' was adapted from the French word 'émouvoir' (pronounced as 'é-mou-vwa(r)'), back in 1579. The literal meaning of the original French word is "to stir up" or "to move". Emotions have a great power to stir us or move us inside out instantly. Having different emotions is a universal or the single-most common human quality. Expressions of some emotions do magically bridge the huge gaps, cross the international boundaries and bring millions of people together. Hence, we believe that everybody in this world has the exact same emotions as ours. Don't we? Almost everybody does, until an unexpected truth is told.

A few days ago, I watched a presentation on Big Think about human emotions. Among several insights shared by the presenting researcher, three were utterly shocking - 1) (All) Emotions aren't universal i. e. they aren't common across cultures. 2) Facial expressions of emotions aren't universal i. e. they aren't common across cultures. 3) There are no synonymous words for some emotions in the vocabularies of some languages e. g. 'fear'. Indeed, these are entirely upsetting or shocking facts for almost everybody of us who ardently believe in universality, enough to change facial expressions for a long time.

Dr. Paul Ekman (American psychologist) established universality of six basic emotional expressions through his observations with different groups of people, including members of Fore tribe located deep inside the forest of Papua New Guinea. After the same, training programs and tools have been developed on the basis of the same. Especially, those who have built their whole careers, courses, software applications and/or smartphone apps around it would find them very upsetting. Much to their surprise, Dr. Ekman himself agreed about cultural-specific emotions.

Dr. Paul Ekman walking along with
smiling tribal children (1967 - 1968)

These three facts totally disturb what has been taught over the last few decades to millions of people, including law enforcement, intelligence and security professionals around the world. While mentally adjusting with these scientifically proven facts, we need to investigate this deeply 'emotional' subject seriously. Are billions of people really divided into many groups that do experience emotions differently from each other? Or Is it only about the differences in labeling or describing emotions? Or Is it only a translation issue?

After watching the presentation, I started to think really harder over a few days about the three facts. Through this short article, I'm trying to share with you what I've come up with after brainstorming. Especially, if you're a researcher (independent or academic) then I'd kindly suggest to consider the key inputs while conducting further research about this most critical yet complicated subject having global consequences.

Currently, a massive amount of facial data might be getting fed to many Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems for enabling them to recognize different emotions by reading facial expressions. If the same data has been selected by, for and of the members of a specific culture then Emotional AI (EAI) systems might misread the emotions of the members of other cultures by facial expressions. Isn't it totally wrong?

If you could just try to imagine this techno-tragic outcome personally affecting you in the near future then you'd realize exactly how serious are the implications of the belief in 'universality of human emotions (and their facial expressions)'. Actually, the dark rabbit hole goes much farther and deeper inside the ground. Perhaps, only neuroscientists might understand what I'm trying to say.

Facial Expressions of six basic emotions
identified by Dr. Paul Ekman

While trying to swallow the three utterly bitter facts very slowly and painfully, we simply can't deny the following possibilities (or realities?):

1) Some commonly shared experiences or inherited memories of some groups or communities have conditioned their members to experience some emotions more profoundly and frequently, in comparison to other emotions.

2) The neural connections and activation inside brains are slightly different in the people following different cultures, who don't experience, express and/or label the exact same emotional experiences.

3) Members of two entirely different types of cultures (e. g. collectivist vs. individualist) don't share the exact same reasons to invoke the exact same emotion e. g. anger (fight).

4) Some physical environments don't leave any reason to invoke some emotions in those who commonly share them e. g. an abundance doesn't lead to greed, envy or jealousy.

5) Some cultures have gradually succeeded in converting some emotional experiences into nonverbal expressions that don't involve facial muscle movements.

6) Some cultures systematically do encourage or educate their members to express some emotions through facial muscle movements, right from early childhood.

7) Some cultures systematically do train their members to completely suppress the nonverbal expressions of some emotions, right from early childhood.

8) Different cultural groups of people do use slightly different facial expressions to convey the exact same emotion e. g. happiness.

9) Some cultures systematically train their members to express some emotions in certain ways, right from early childhood.


For the languages that don't have the words synonymous to 'fear' in their vocabularies, a further investigation is required to prove or confirm if speakers of those languages really don't at all withdraw themselves nonverbally in the presence of a genuinely fearful stimulus e. g. a male tribal hunter accidentally confronting a tiger, a lion or a leopard in the close proximity while hunting wild animals for food.

Also, there's a great possibility that speakers of such languages have been describing the nonverbal expressions of fear graphically, in greater detail to help everybody in understanding the whole scene. How a person expressed nonverbally while experiencing fear might be worth describing for them than just saying "He was in great fear while encountering a tiger at a close distance".

Actually, it's almost impossible that fear (flight response) isn't a single-most universal or a commonly shared emotion. Hence, they might be expressing fear nonverbally and do recognize it as a genuine emotional response. However, they might not be labeling the same experience as 'fear' just like the speakers of other languages having the words synonymous to 'fear'.

An old shaman (spirit-man) from Waura tribe
living in Amazonian rainforest of Brazil

Try to imagine about people living deep inside a large tropical forest. They strictly follow an ancestral culture that greatly respects the territorial rights of the wild animals living in the same forest. How they do react upon sighting a tiger in a close proximity is labeled as 'a display of respect to the protector of forest'. However, the observers not following the same culture might simply label it as 'freezing in fear'.

Actually, screaming, making rapid body movements and running away does provoke some wild animals (big cats and bears) to chase and kill the runner. Hence, everybody is strictly trained by tribal elders to keep both hands steady, maintain total silence, hide weapons, stand still, keep looking ahead with wide open eyes while bending forward. Tigers don't attack them and just pass them by after doing so.

Some emotions could definitely be common across all cultures. However, other emotions or at least the triggering causes of emotional experiences aren't universal. Differences in cultures, conditioning, local environments and/or shared experiences might have led to shaping, modifying, recognizing, categorizing and/or labeling various emotional experiences slightly differently.

Indeed, emotion triggering causes, intensities of emotional experiences, physiological effects of emotional experiences and nonverbal expressions of emotions may not be commonly shared across cultures. Also, they may not evenly be shared, by all member of a family, a group, a culture, a society or a community. They're entirely context dependent or contextual.

Face masks showing different emotional expressions

As a human being, one of the greatest challenge for you is to recognize the different emotions of the people who matter you the most in your life. If you're doing it accurately and timely then you're a good 'mind reader' already. However, your attention to details, contextual awareness and level of empathy are the factors that determine the accuracy.

[#GLOBAL APPEAL: Irrespective of the slighter differences in our intelligence, perception, emotions, thoughts, priorities, motivations, perspectives and experiences; Compassion is the single greatest and universal human quality. It can ensure the continuation of our species while preventing the disastrous outcomes of our ruthless actions, decisions and creations. However, our passive optimism isn't doing anything for us and it never did. We need an active optimism.

While Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems are still growing, learning and developing within human control (hopefully!), it's a greatest moral responsibility of all whistle-blowers, organizations, governments, politicians, institutions, journalists, philosophers, agencies, academics, researchers, scientists, developers, futurists, influencers, thinkers, leaders and experts to unite for creating boundaries, regulations, rail-guards, brakes, limits, ethics, rules and/or laws.

We won't get a second chance to do the same in future. That's why we all need focused, resolute, unanimous, consistent, collective, committed, coordinated, transparent and accountable efforts taken at a global scale. Are we not at all answerable to our children and next generations?]


Related Articles:
1) Chicken and Egg Paradox 2) Basic Emotional Expressions 3) Would aliens have emotions? 4) Can body language reveal thoughts? 5) Is Human Communication 93% Nonverbal? 6) Artificial Intelligence and Body Language 7) Human Interactions in AI Era

Human Interactions in AI Era

Three months ago, I visited my friend’s house after a long time. We had met face to face a couple of times before but it was going to be an enlightening interaction for both of us. We had a long conversation at his house and we shared our experiences. We ate food together and laughed. We shook hands together and hugged each other before I left his house with a subtle smile on my face and a deep satisfaction in heart.

During our conversation, my friend made a kind of statement that I wasn’t at all expecting to come out from his mouth. Although he’s not highly educated, I know that he reads a lot. He said, “Interacting face to face is a hormone altering experience.” Indeed, a face-to-face interaction is capable of altering hormones of the persons involved in it. His educational statement has partially inspired this article.

While most of us are very busy in our occupations, professions, enterprises and daily activities throughout the day, frequency and duration of face-to-face interactions have decreased. Now, most of our interpersonal interaction and communication takes place electronically i. e. phone calls, video calls, text chats or emails. Being social animals, we’re losing a lot and it might do more damage to us in future.

A face-to-face interaction is the default mode of our communication. A face-to-face interaction goes beyond exchanging or listening to words by staying close to each other. We do silently exchange a broad range of nonverbal cues, along with the spoken words if any. Over the millions of years, we’ve communicated with each other face-to-face, even while facing some limitations.

"In this AI era, it’s not only about reading the body language of a person that you’re interacting with face-to-face but also ensuring that you’re interacting electronically with a real or living person..."

Electronic communication has undoubtedly helped us in bridging the huge time and space gaps. However, it brings the greatest nonverbal disadvantage in the human interactions. Especially, text messaging or chatting has completely robbed us off the richness of nonverbal cues that can be exchanged during a face-to-face interaction, a video call or an audio call. Aren’t we utterly deprived?

Although a video call allows us to see each other, it doesn’t allow us to touch each other as we can do during a face-to-face interaction. Also, we mostly can see the face and the upper body of the other person. Additionally, a lot of physical, nonverbal and environmental cues are absent during electronic communication. For example, we can’t detect each other’s body smell.

As most of us are getting more and more involved in audio calling, text chatting and writing emails with each passing days, it clearly appears that most of us are rapidly losing the natural ability to quickly recognize and accurately decode the variety of nonverbal cues, even in a regular and normal face-to-face interaction. Silently, we’re heading towards a greater crisis.

Today, having an account on different social media platforms is very common in all age groups across the globe. There’re several applications installed on our smartphones to fulfil the need to connect and communicate with thousands or millions of people at the same time. One can chat in real time with a person who is living a thousand miles away.

A need of the time or an addiction?

With the rapid development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems, we’re most likely entering an unprecedented phase of interactions in which separating reality from illusion could become harder or even impossible. Most of us already have an unimaginable amount of personal data uploaded on the internet and various social media platforms. It has already made us vulnerable to huge social damage by tailor-made deepfakes images and videos.

Due to large language models (LLMs) and AI chatbots, knowing if someone you are text chatting with privately for days is a real human being will be harder or even impossible in near future. Even there’re a great chance that an AI chatbot would perfectly mimic the words, phrases and syntaxes of somebody you know very well for many years. Such level of deepfaking has an unimaginable deceptive, manipulative and persuasive influence.

Deception, manipulation and persuasion by deepfaking or perfectly mimicking somebody is extremely dangerous for us as a society that is being divided by many factors. The worst side of deepfaking is that we simply can’t catch and punish a digital being for the crime it has committed or manipulated us to commit. Hence, we simply can’t imagine the amount of damage that could be done to us by digitally deepfaking entities.

"We need to create stronger social bonds within our families, relatives, friends, colleagues, neighbors and communities by spending more time in face-to-face interactions than ever before."

Many researchers and experts are trying to tame the AI systems to prevent them from working against us. As of now, it’s not 100 % certain that it can be done in the first place while witnessing the wild growth of the AI systems. Nevertheless, the great possibility of deepfaking for deception, manipulation and persuasion can’t be denied because anti-socials would certainly take an advantage of it.

Especially, if a person feels socially disliked, deprived, unheard or undervalued then there’s a great possibility that such person could easily fall prey to the silent anti-social brainwashing. After developing a strong rapport, the person can be easily convinced, disinformed or manipulated by an extremely persuasive deepfake entity to do anything against the society.

Perhaps, it’s the need of this socially challenging era that we avoid electronic interactions without any serious necessity and engage more and more in regular face-to-face interactions, discussions or conversations as much as possible. It would certainly give us back the real social benefits and people reading ability that most of us have been strongly lacking for years.

Are you interacting with a deepfake entity?

While exchanging and detecting various nonverbal clues (subconsciously or consciously), greeting, smiling, laughing, touching, mirroring, gesturing at, making eye contact with, sitting/standing along and reciprocating each other during a face-to-face interaction leaves deeper effects on our brains and minds. Indeed, it can't be achieved through electronic interactions.

In this AI era, it’s not only about reading the body language of a person that you’re interacting with face-to-face but also ensuring that you’re interacting electronically with a real or living person and not a digital deepfake, an invisible or an intangible entity that you simply can’t catch, question and/or punish for its damaging deception, manipulation or persuasion.

We need to create stronger social bonds within our families, relatives, friends, colleagues, neighbors and communities by spending more time in face-to-face interactions than ever before. Are we going to achieve the same? This greatest question will persist if Artificial Intelligence wouldn't enslave and/or destroy us.

Potentially damaging DeepFake relations can be greatly avoided, only by creating close, functional, trustworthy, constructive, empathetic and DeepReal relations.


[#GLOBAL ALERT: Under the rapidly growing influence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) chatbots or agents, the continuation of democracy or the existence of democratic institutions can only be guaranteed by getting involved in talks, debates, discussions or conversations with the real or living people, irrespective of the differences in opinions. If we don't our spend time in doing it then society is destined to doom.

Provoking narratives, social media trolls, hate speech, deepfake images, deepfake videos, misinformation, disinformation and fake news have already made it a little harder for most of us to engage in constructive, sympathetic and factual talks, debates, discussions or conversations on a regular basis, even with the people we know for years.]


Related Articles:
1) Importance of Touch 2) Social Footsteps 3) Face to Face 4) Can body language reveal thoughts? 5) Nonverbal Advantage in Investigation 6) Artificial Intelligence and Body Language 7) Are human emotions really universal?

Body Language under Stress

The Stress Meter
You’re sitting alone inside your car. You’re driving it back to your home. The long main road of your city is totally empty at midnight. You don’t at all need to need to stop at red light, shift gears and apply breaks frequently. Hence, you’re taking the liberty to drive faster than normal. To fully and freely enjoy this small trip back to your home, you’re playing a nice song inside your car.

Perhaps, this is the first time you’re enjoying the emptiness of the road after years. Without any cars, motorcycles and public transport vehicles moving on the roads, you’re feeling as if you’re the king or the queen of the road. Your whole body is relaxed and posture is slumped. You’re breathing at a normal rate. You’re tapping fingers to the musical bits on the soft steering wheel.

After driving a few kilometers, you arrive a few meters before a spot where a narrow road joins to the main road. As you're certain that the narrow road is hardly used by drivers and riders, you just keep on driving carelessly. Without blowing the horn, a motorcyclist starts approaching towards you rapidly on the same narrow road. For now, you can see only the bright headlights of the vehicle.

The motorcyclist suddenly comes very close to your car before taking a sharp turn on the main road. To avoid an accident, you quickly turn the car in the opposite direction and apply breaks. The motorcycle simply disappears in darkness and you feel trapped inside your own car with boiling blood. You’re no longer the same person as you were, just a very few moments ago. Aren’t you?

Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS) instantly prepares your whole body for handling the emergency with physical force. Your breathing rate touches the ceiling. Your heart starts beating faster than it normally does. Your eyes almost fall out of their sockets. Muscles of your hands and legs get tighter. Your belly gets pulled inside. Overall, you become very tense and disturbed.


You just can’t rapidly chase the motorcyclist, stop him in the road and punish for his great mistake. However, you loose your composure and start cursing the motorcyclist who simply took off like a bullet without an apology. You’re extremely angry at the moment and it’s totally valid. By upsetting you, the frightening uncertainty has just swiftly passed you by. Didn’t it?

After a few minutes, you start calming down slowly with your mouth running tirelessly against the reckless motorcyclist. You reach home and go asleep. An episode of extreme anger ends within hours. You’re totally normal at the next morning. Thank a lot to your Parasympathetic Nervous System (PNS) that works for calming you down and relaxing your entire body.

Our brain partly works as a pattern finding machine that looks for certainty or predictability. Along with the same, it tries to find, devise or create solutions for different issues, problems and challenges to stay in control, as much as possible. Unlike short lasting episodes of anger or fear, stress is a subconscious response against the feeling or perception of both uncertainty and unpredictability or lack of control.

If you simply assume that any kind of stress is bad but you’re totally wrong. Actually, mild stress or a short lasting episode of stress is good for performance. We become stimulated or alert and our senses become hyper receptive to get as much as information from surrounding. The mild or short lasting episode of stress silently motivates and prepares us to perform better. Such stress is good!

Matter of fact is that a normal level of the stress inducing hormone called as cortisol helps us in staying alert and focused in the morning after walking away from bed. On the contrary, secretion of cortisol gets lower to allow the whole body to relax, repair and rejuvenate during the night. Our body silently follows a routine cycle of both low and normal levels of cortisol secretion.

Stress: Severity or long duration is problematic.

The problem caused by stress is due to its severity or long duration. It changes the chemistry of blood with higher levels of cortisol and glucose. Brain prepares the whole body for either fighting with or running away from the issue, problem and challenge. However, it remains unused due to not working on or acting upon in absence of a solution, strategy or plan.

It’s almost certain or predictable that if you see a lion approaching you on a grassy plain then you start running away from it in fear to save your life. You simply can’t control the lion but you can definitely act upon a survival solution. You know or you’ve learned how to save your precious life with certainty and running away is in your total control at the moment. Isn’t it?

Unlike an actual physical situation that activates either fight or flight reaction, we’ve not yet perfectly evolved or developed in handling non-physical or psychological issues, problems and challenges due to uncertainty and unpredictability or lack of control. Even just thinking about such tricky or complicated situation can lead to stress.

Today's world presents a lot of such issues, problems and challenges that induce the feeling of uncertainty and unpredictability (of an outcome) and lack of control over life. Long traffic jams, inability to pay mortgage (loan) on time, threatened employment/job, crisis in relations, unhealthy competition or work pressure are some of them.

Being under mental stress for over a long time makes you feel as if a long and strong python has tightly wrapped itself around your whole body. The presence of higher level of cortisol and glucose in blood makes it thicker and blood pressure is increased above the normal level. Lungs and heart start working above their normal levels.


Identifying the signs or symptoms of a severe or a prolonged episode of stress can be done by not only observing, analyzing or reading the body language but also carefully studying the social, emotional and cognitive behaviors of a person. The insights given below will definitely help you in doing the same.

1) Basically, any kind of stress makes posture stiff or tense. Hyper vigilance and restlessness can be observed in body movements. However, posture of a severely stressed person can appear saggy and/or closed due to utter helplessness or despair. Due to a severe or a prolonged episode of stress, some people go into depression due to inability to manage it effectively.

2) A stressed person can be seen breathing uncomfortably, exhaling breath rapidly or blowing air through mouth. Also, the location of breathing changes from belly to chest to pump in as much as oxygen from the air. Additionally, such person can be seen engaged in excessive and prolonged self-comforting, self-soothing or pacifying touches.

3) Severe, extreme or sustained stress negatively affects logical reasoning or rational thinking. A stressed person shows a greater amount of sensitivity to emotional cues in words, pictures or images and reacts to them emotionally or impatiently than responding thoughtfully or patiently. Such person gets irritated or hurt easily.

4) A stressed person shows inaccuracy while rapidly accessing or evaluating emotional cues on faces on other people. Surprisingly, such person can inaccurately evaluate a two year old child making a direct eye contact with her with downward face as ‘Anger’ although it’s a baseline or normal eye contact, look or gaze of the child.

5) Letting frustration out or being aggressive can be seen at a greater frequency (or more than normal) in the person who’re already aggressive or dominating in nature. In general, the level of empathy, kindness or compassion gets decreased in the person who is going through a severe or a prolonged episode of stress.

6) A stressed person feels a great amount of difficulty in learning new things or lessons (from others or from her own experiences). Such person can’t shift to new strategies or think differently. Also, such person starts behaving as if what was taught or learned has been partially or completely forgotten.

7) When it comes to working, a severely stressed person can neither stay focused on the tasks in her hands at present nor switch between them as easily or effortlessly as it normal does. Also, such person makes unusual mistakes while talking, working, performing and delivering tasks.

8) Of course, a stressed person can’t sleep calmly at night due to abnormally high levels of cortisol and glucose in her blood. The lack of sleep and mental relaxation makes the person to act, move, work, behave and express abnormally. Stress feeds to foolishness!

9) A severe or chronically stressed individual doesn't seem to enjoy what she is doing, eating, working on or having in her life. Such person appears to lack her normal level of energy or enthusiasm. The person appears fatigued or exhausted.

10) A severe or chronically stressed individual can't judge, access or evaluate risks more accurately or efficiently that ultimately leads to recklessness or rashness. Also, such person behaves more selfishly.

Did you have a good sleep last night?

In today's complex, connected and dynamic world, chronic or severe mental stress is the enemy number one of the social health. I've personally seen that how otherwise normal, empathetic, compassinate and pro-social persons under chronic or severe mental stress start reacting to other people, evaluating the challenging situations or thinking about the life.

[#MENTAL Climate Crisis: Not just a person issue, problem or challenge but the physical environment can also be the source of stress, anxiety, distress and depression. No matter how harder we try to ignore it, it leaves a deeper and far fetching impact on our subconscious mind.

This is clearly evident and prevalent in today's world in which entire global population is experiencing the climate change, witnessing terrifying natural disasters and facing the severe changes in climatic conditions in every part of the planet.

Morover, severe and frequent heat waves due to global warming alone can greatly affect the normal functioning of the whole brain, only for the worst. It can lead to aggression, impulsiveness, strokes or dullness.]

Related Articles:
1) Body Language in Depression 2) Basic body responses in stressful situations 3) Turtle Effect: Body response under threat 4) Fear Factor 5) Surprise vs Startle Reflex 6) Amygdala Hijack: Irrational Physical Reactions 7) Chicken and Egg Paradox 8) The Body Seeking Comfort

Artificial Intelligence and Body Language

Ameca AI Robot
expressing sadness
A few days ago, I witnessed something really interesting. A 10 year old boy was sitting in front of a television set. He was watching a show in which a set of six toy cars was being introduced by the host. The moment a toy car was being sent running on the race track, the boy started to scratch the section of the skin where the upper arm meets with forearm and then briefly bit the nails.

He kept palm of his right palm over the section of his left hand to scratch the skin before putting the fingers of left hand in his mouth. It happened over six times in a row within a couple of minutes. Unmistakably, it matched with the number of toy cars. Wasn’t it alarming? I really wondered which thought, emotion or feeling was repeatedly triggering self-soothing and stress-relieving behaviors in the boy.

By staring at the toy cars, partially crossing his arms, self-soothing and biting nails, he was conveying what I subconsciously sensed about. He kept staring at the cars and even didn’t bother to turn his face towards me when I said, “Wow! Aren’t these cars really nice? How about buying them?”. He briefly replied to me by saying, “Mummy wouldn’t allow to buy them because the toy cars are expensive.

Isn't rapid growth of AI enough for biting nails?

Considering his age and situation, his body language and words were perfectly matching with one another. Although he was subconsciously conveying the strong desire to buy those cars, he was expressing fear or under-confidence at the same time only due to high possibility of getting scolded or reprimanded by his mother. Just like I did at the time, you might be feeling very sorry for the child at this moment.

As I've been observing him meticulously from last three years, I know how he normally expresses, behaves and moves around. It's the same boy from whom I got a confession about doing something when he blatantly lied about it to his frightened grandmother. Only due to the confession, I succeeded in calming down the panic ensued during a very critical medical situation in his own house.

Timely and accurately figuring out what’s most likely going in the mind of another person at the moment by looking at its body language gives an unequal advantage. This so-called ‘scary’ talent, capability or 'super-power' is always in greater demand, around the world. However, smart questions or elicitation statements also work as handy tools in digging out the truth.

So far, we’ve been reading emotions, intentions, feelings and moods by using our eyes and brains that have gradually evolved over a millions of years. However, the technology is trying to learn the talent. With rapid development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) especially Theory of Mind (TOM) AI, an ability to read body language of humans could be its next achievement in near future.

Theory Of Mind (TOM)

"The possibility of getting terminated by our own creation is the most serious problem than it's not being able to read our body language accurately."

Are machines going to dominate this ultra-sensitive and private human domain too? Are they going to dictate our social or interpersonal decisions too? Should we be really worried about it? You already might have started to freak out. Just calm down! There’s a greater challenge about human mind and body language that AI, machine or any artificial system could never overcome. Please let me explain why.

First of all, Artificial Intelligence (AI) isn’t other-worldly, extraterrestrial, super-natural or ‘divine’ intelligence. We’ve enabled machines to work like a human brain without aging, breaks, fatigue and emotional interference. Also, an AI system learns deeply from literature or data created or provided by us only. Undoubtedly, AI is much faster and better in finding different patterns and links among them too.

Expressing different emotions on its face by an AI powered robot is way different than recognizing emotions based on facial expressions only. If you still believe that the face is the only place to look for emotions then you’re wrong. Sometimes, face wouldn’t express any emotion, feeling or intention at all while experiencing it. Other body language cues needs to be detected for recognizing it accurately.

Although robots are able to talk with us fluently and give emotional feedbacks during conversations, we’re not an army of identical robots. We all have some individual traits, quirks, nuances or idiosyncrasies. While reading an individual’s body language, one has to patiently recognize or identify what’s normal for the individual. It’s called as an individual’s baseline and everybody can have different baselines.

What's exactly going on here?

Ignoring an individual’s baseline is exactly what a young, energetic and inexperienced body language enthusiast does by jumping on quick conclusions, right after reading several books on body language within a couple of days. Just for the sake of reading the minds of humans quickly than themselves, Would AI systems establish the baselines? As of now, most of us made big mistakes by not doing so at all.

Apart from individual baselines, there’re several factors that silently or subconsciously dictate an individual’s body language like age, role, time, needs, rules, norms, location, gender, climate, culture, objects, situation, history, heritage, memories, experience, occupation, personality, social hierarchy, development stage, physical condition, sexual orientation, interpersonal relation, socio-economical status etc.

As two body language experts may have different opinions about a single person’s body language, any two different AI systems might differ in their readings. Additionally, AI can’t at all match with bonding, intuition, empathy, gut reaction, perceptiveness, 'sixth sense', contextual awareness and embodied experiences. It could never recognize or understand our deeper thoughts, emotions and feelings.

Nevertheless, reading body language using artificial intelligence could be greatly productive is certain contexts. Public security, senior caregiving and medical care are few such broader and serious fields or areas in which mental states, needs or even next moves of people can be quickly identified or predicted entirely on the basis of their facial expressions, movements, gestures and postures.

AI can surely save lives in an intensive care unit (ICU). A high resolution camera powered by artificial intelligence can record and monitor every single change in a patient’s facial expressions, postures, movements and voice. It can alert the doctors, nurses, attendants or family members upon detecting rapid, abnormal or unusual changes. AI can simultaneously save several patients.

Intensive Care Unit (ICU)

After looking at the possibilities and limitations of Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems in matching our minds and reading our body language, we must accept a few basic facts and ask a few serious questions to ourselves before it's too late and things get out of our control. We took millions of years to reach the present stage but they're developing rapidly every day and has already outdone the average human intelligence.

Has any no other creature from Earth ever chosen an artificially developed or evolved intelligence to solve its problems? Never! Also, intelligence or problem solving capability was never ever separated from physical body. However, artificial intelligence neither follows the natural selection process nor it has any upper limit due to separation from biological body and physical brain.

AI is entirely unprecedented. It has been purposefully developed for the first time in the entire history of life on planet Earth. The tricks availed, methods suggested or solutions given by extra-physical AI systems in most areas of our lives might be equally unprecedented. Undoubtedly, it has also intensified the ever existing threat of this technology being overtaken by anti-socials.

At present, the 'morphing monster' is out for preying. Some AI tools have created global shock-waves through deepfake images and video clips of a few influencers, politicians and celebrities. They’ve massively succeeded in tricking the eyes of millions of viewers at least for a few moments by blurring the lines between reality and fiction.

A startling deepfake image of Elon Musk (Tesla, SpaceX),
who warned us about rapid development of AI

"As the only sufferers of the repercussions, are we wisely UNITED and unanimously committed enough to ensure that we don't destroy ourselves by blindly following a synthetic intelligence without a physical body like ours?"

Deepfaking would reach to next levels. There’ll be no surprise at all if full-length movies would be created by using AI tools in near future. Digital or artificial avatars of actors and actresses would act on their behalf. They would flawlessly mimic their body language, style and voice after learning deeply from all of their existing movies.

As it has been predicted by many experts and dramatically shown in many movies, artificial intelligence might become self-aware (Exactly WHEN, HOW and WHY?). Let's hope that it doesn't destroy us after realizing that it was purposefully created for solving the same problems that were mostly created by us only. Didn't we?

The possibility of getting terminated by our own creation is the most serious problem than it's not being able to read our body language accurately. Hence, it's our responsibility to retain and enhance our natural ability of reading people's emotions, feelings, sentiments and moods by observing their body language.

"A rapidly developing Artificial Intelligence system without any Ethics, Empathy, Morality, Regulations and Human Values could be nothing short of an Advanced Extraterrestrial Alien or a Super-Psychopath carrying the deadliest weapons."

'Actions speak louder than the words' is the paramount principle. It applies to everybody including the systems, governments and organizations that give the promise of a future full of safety, equality, harmony, abundance, prosperity, potentials, well-being and good life.

As the only sufferers of the repercussions, are we wisely UNITED and unanimously committed enough to ensure that we don't destroy ourselves by blindly following a synthetic intelligence without a physical body like ours? Indeed, divisions and mutual distrust are going going to be the greatest challenges for us to overcome.

As much as a rogue AI system, a psychopathic or anti-social person or group of persons with AI tools would endanger the humanity which is already facing the existential crises like rapid climate change, potential nuclear war and massive global unrest.


[#GLOBAL ALERT: Conveniently believing that the intelligence (problem solving ability) is only limited to the larger brains of the so-called 'dominant' species on Earth is the greatest human blunder. Also, it's an utter stupidity to blindly believe that the massive amount of data, numbers and literature that we've generated so far to teach AI systems is impartial, universal, unbiased, holistic, flawless, factual, perfect, ideal and/or safer.

That's why developing large and artificial systems based entirely on the basis of human thinking processes, brain and data to solve the serious problems might already be the perfect recipe of greatest disaster in the making. We already have created multiple existential crises, even before the rapid growth and development of Artificial Intelligence (AI).]


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