Yesterday the topic of Live English, the English discussion group that I lead, was technology. While researching for the class, I was surprised to find a majority of negative comments on the effects of technology on the human race. Well, thankfully, this morning, the New York Times restored my faith in useful technology, with an article about ATM's that may or may not be someday installed in some places in Russia that use voice detection software and lie detector tests. However, that's not the "useful" technology I'm referring to- this I found later in the article:
In the Russian national railway call station, they have a system that detects the anger level of the caller: “ "Within seconds, the computer can sort incoming calls into red, yellow, green and blue categories, based on the emotional state of the speaker. Red calls typically prompt a supervisor to listen in.
In a demonstration, technicians played a recording of an actual call that caused the program to illuminate a red dot next to a phone number displayed on the screen. It was the voice of a passenger who had just learned she could not take her small dog onto a first-class car.
“Do you know how much a ticket costs? Yes, it’s big money, and you are telling me I cannot bring a dog?” the woman said. “The dog, it’s no bigger than, I don’t know, a pack of cigarettes! What should I do, throw it out the window?” “
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