The University of South Australia and the University of Stuttgart have been hard at work putting their brains together to create a computational one. Specifically, the two have worked in conjunction with each other in order to create an artificial intelligence that can track and monitor the eye movements of an individual and then from that create a report of the person’s personality.
As for how they did this, the study tracked the eye movements of 42 human participants using a video-based eye-tracker from SensorMotoric Instruments, the inputs were then cross-checked with findings from well-established questionnaires. From here the researchers were able to rate the participants via the computer program on each of the “big five” personality traits, these being; openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism.
However, only four of the “big five” were able to be reliably identified, all but openness. Although that doesn’t mean that this was a failure, far from it, as this was the first time eye movements have been used to identify personality traits reliably at all. Furthermore, other studies have found that you can predict the approximate political views of an individual from their “big five” scores. Maybe one day we could see artificial intelligence predict someone’s political view simply from their eyes.
