An old story from NPR came to mind when I was hacking some AI systems meant to read facial expressions.

Darwin hypothesized making faces probably had some survival advantage… [and then neuroscientists Adam Anderson and Joshua Susskind from the University of Toronto were able to prove] fear expression opens up, speeds up and increases sensory information about the environment. In contrast, an expression of disgust – a scrunched up face – does just the opposite. Disgust shuts our sensory information, the researchers found. You see and smell less.

It often shows up in power dynamics.

…ideas of license and obligation translate into the micro-reality of facial expression.

Some of it is common sense stuff, such as politicians try hard to make their face look excited if their constituents value someone being easily excited.

…the more a particular country’s culture values excitement, the more its political leaders show enthusiastic smiles. On the other hand, when the specific culture emphasizes calm, those leaders show more reserved smiles.

Of course the problem becomes that 13 of those political smiles might be indicators of risk and danger.

Of 19 different types of smile, only six occur when we’re having a good time. The rest happen when we’re in pain, embarrassed, uncomfortable, horrified or even miserable. A smile may mean contempt, anger or incredulity, that we’re lying or that we’ve lost. […] “When bonobo chimpanzees are afraid they’ll expose their teeth and draw their lips back so that their gums are exposed,” says Zanna Clay, a primatologist at the University of Birmingham. The ‘silent bared teeth display’ looks so much like a smile it’s often featured on birthday cards, but in chimpanzees it’s a gesture of submission, used by low-status individuals to appease more dominant members of the group.

That certainly sheds light on why men in American politics would so often tell women and foreign politicians to smile more. The smile they want to see is of appeasement, accepting domination.

Every woman I know seems to have a story about being told to smile. Mine involves my eighth-grade gym teacher, who decided when I was 13 that I wasn’t smiling enough in his class. Twice a week he would walk down the line of us, taking attendance, and stop in front of me. “Smile!” he’d say. “I like it when you smile!” The first few times I smiled at him involuntarily, then, furious at myself, rearranged my face into a scowl. Later, I came to expect it. I would clench my teeth as his sneakers squeaked closer, steeling my face to stay rigid and calm. Smile! You know I like it when you smile! He’d stand over me, waiting with his clipboard, until I finally gave in.

Meanwhile, Russians apparently treat smiling as a sign of stupidity, Chinese look upon smiling as anger or even guilt.

The bottom line is the more that emerging “intelligence” systems are expected to detect emotions, the more I suspect actual intelligence will defeat such horribly primitive, yet expensive and powerful, intentions. Facial expression training is like bringing a knife to an AI fight, where the knife wins.

Teslas that have “veered” fatally into the trees have been a nonstop problem lately (no pun intended). Here’s another one:

A man died and a woman was injured after crashing their Tesla into a tree in a south Houston neighborhood, police said.

The crash happened around 11 p.m. in the 6600 block of Del Rio…

The car burst into fire and the passenger was saved by neighbors who were fortunate enough to not be killed by a Tesla on the loose near them.

A quick check of the accident scene suggests “Autopilot” may have been involved.

Perhaps steering or suspension parts failed catastrophically, as the Tesla is not known for its quality or handling. That’s what the investigation points towards, with images of the car “veered” into a tree along a straight and flat road. It could be that alone.

The trees clearly prevented the Tesla from crashing into at least one home at 11pm, threatening local residents like a cruise missile (e.g. NY).

And on that note it’s hard not to question whether the driver had depended at all on centrally designed and controlled automation systems, which couldn’t handle such a very simple test. The circumstances are very similar to so many other (e.g. NC) recent “veered driverless” Tesla crashes.

For a long time now I’ve written here about Tesla’s failure to stop at red lights.

Florida police seem to describe the problem like a traffic pandemic, due to sudden rise in Tesla crashes they see every week.

Now the AG and DOJ allegedly are taking notice of a brand new video by an ex-Tesla AI staff member demonstrating Tesla safety failures are as bad as ever in 2023 if not getting worse.

Very clearly the Tesla drives through a solid red light. And very clearly the whole advertising campaign of FSD centered on the ability to react properly to signs and lights.

California‘s attorney general’s office followed up with Wester during the second quarter of 2023 to interview him regarding the complaint filed with the FTC [that he was misled by FSD marketing]. Additionally, the office’s consumer protection division this month sought information from a former unnamed Tesla employee who worked on the FSD program for an “unspecified but active investigation” into Tesla, according to the CNBC report. […] Full Self Driving is billed as a more advanced technology that supposedly can stop for stoplights and stop signs and make turns at intersections.

Billed? Yeah, advertised. And yet, as technology quality expert Dan O’Dowd just wrote in a letter to Congress, FSD is extremely likely to be proven a total fraud.

Under current law, there are no restrictions to placing any technology in vehicles, no matter how dangerous that technology may be.

An early morning Tesla, which usually suggests someone asleep at the wheel abusing their “Autopilot”, veered off a highway and crashed into an empty campsite.

In the early hours of the morning on July 27, a Tesla veered off the westbound lanes of the 10 freeway near the National exit in Palms, careening down an embankment and landing in an encampment at approximately 2:20 a.m.

Three individuals had to be extricated from the vehicle, and two were subsequently transported to a medical facility in fair condition.

Speculation is that the campsite would have suffered a mass casualty event, had it not been empty.