How Algorithms Discern Our Mood From What We Write Online | Knowable Magazine

“The Hedonometer is a relatively recent incarnation of a task computer scientists have been working on for more than 50 years: using computers to assess words’ emotional tone. To build the Hedonometer, UVM computer scientist Chris Danforth had to teach a machine to understand the emotions behind those tweets — no human could possibly read them all. This process, called sentiment analysis, has made major advances in recent years and is finding more and more uses.”

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“The hard part is understanding humans. As Liu says, “We don’t even understand what is understanding.”

Read the Article | Knowable Magazine | Dana Mackenzie

Sixteen faces expressing the human passions. Coloured engraving by J. Pass, 1821, after C. Le Brun.

Wellcome Collection License: CC-BY