Where goes the Feelings Monster? Microsoft have developed what they believe to be a method to support educators in better tuning their lessons to cater for the kinds of emotions students might express.
Good idea, considering today's students are becoming scarily psychopathic with their use of emotions. But why not stop there? There is a discussion to be had about this particular subject.
The theory to develop something as perhaps as sinister as this is to find out if students like or dislike the way in which they are being taught. Of course, the obvious conclusions will be its easy abuse to thwart teachers from actually teaching. They will be spending more time analysing emotional responses from what they are saying than actually saying anything. Not much of a classroom, eh?
You could call it instead a wild sheep chasing after a shepherd, or a prairie dog turning rabid, or a zombie piling disused brains into an emotion spinner. All these things could be possible, I suppose (probably not the latter).
But the Feelings Monster is much more than that. It preys on your emotions, it seems, determining if the teacher is doing a good job keeping the class in shape, raring to get started on the mundane maths class and drawing chequered grids on the whiteboard and calling it noughts and crosses. They probably forgot how many grid cells are in noughts and crosses while glancing over their stupid phones to see if the students are smiling.
Don't look at the students for their emotions, look at your phone, you dimwit.
Let's get serious
What is all the fuss about tracking emotional behaviour in children? Oh, but wait, that is EXACTLY what the Feelings Monster is all about. Instead of being a tool designed, allegedly, to help with determining the best form of teaching based on the emotional reactions of kids, it is seemingly a method through which to analyse and record the emotional behaviour of children.
In so doing, teachers can articulate thoughts and ideas without there being any open critical responses in the classroom. Sounds to good to be true, right? But that is what this is seemingly the point.
A record of responses is just that, a record. But like social media, there is a dopamine test involved. What teachers are hoping for is positive environments and positive encounters with children, and the use of technology such as this gives them an excuse to avoid direct confrontation with children who fall out of line.
Now combine this with Artificial Intelligence. Overly zealous behaviour modification can be easily deployed, as the Feelings Monster can be used to determine how students are likely to react in any given situation. Children participating in this will unknowingly be handing over their behaviours to centralised authority where they can be monitored, emotionally, and demonstrate to authority how to deal with any given human in any context.
Behavioural algorithms have been developed for years such as that seen on social media, but now the combination of AI and this so-called "Feelings Monster" could be the method through which to covertly and secretively monitor children's behaviour in the classroom, thereby determining emotional cues and determining the best trigger responses for obedience and submission.
It also serves as the catalyst for emotional control, potentially allowing authority to eliminate threats before they become a threat and exacerbate threats where it serves them.
Children, as usual, are being used as bait for all technological advancements. As long as there is a reasonable excuse to deploy these new devices, no parent can reasonably object. All it takes is one step more before all children are bewildered into thinking their emotional reactions are their own and not otherwise manipulated by technology.
