MIT Students Use GIFs to Teach Computers Emotion

            There is a Mashable article called “MIT Students Use GIFs to Teach Computers Emotion,” which tells the story of two MIT graduate students who created a website called GIFGIF, which presents users two gifs, and they have to choose which one better expresses a certain emotion. The user can sort through different emotions like guilt, happiness, amusement, etc. and pick the gif they think describes that emotion. There are about 4,000 gifs programmed into the site.

            This project was created by Kevin Hu and Travis Rich in order to develop a way for computers to better understand emotions. This technology will be used to translate small portions of text into gifs, like Shakespeare sonnets. I’m not really sure what this will be used for. Perhaps to better understand literature?

            Another potential use of the project is a way of understanding the differences between different cultures of reading emotions. This would be impactful for people to learn different cultures and understand that not everyone interprets the world in the same way. This could be useful in international business and political spheres.

            I tried out the GIFGIF website, and it’s pretty fun in a simple way. Some of the gifs don’t really have anything to do with the emotion presented, so I’m grateful that there is a “neither” option. It is an interesting experience knowing that you are helping improve a technology and teaching computers to learn emotions.