By Patricia Waldron
Cornell researchers are investigating the potential for using artificial intelligence to give robots social intelligence – the ability to read facial cues, anticipate the needs of those around them and function within society.
A new study tested the ability of vision language models (VLMs) – AI systems that can interpret and generate both visual information and language – to predict whether a tense scenario in a short video would end well or badly, such as a toddler carrying an overly full mug of coffee. Researchers also asked the VLMs to make predictions based solely on the facial expressions of people watching those same scenarios.
While the best VLMs surpassed the average human’s ability to predict the ending, the models failed terribly at anticipating the ending based only on facial expressions.
