When it comes to artificial intelligence, developers make a lot of bold claims about what their programs can do.  It’s quickly become a part of our every-day lives, especially with the rise of the ever-controversial facial recognition technology. There’s even software advertised to read your emotions and even predict criminality. What these types of claims show aren’t the endless possibilities of AI, but how the technology is used to legitimize pseudosciences, or believes that claim to be based in science. Generally, the idea that AI can read your emotions is referred to as “affect recognition.” It builds on the pseudoscience of phrenology, which is an offshoot of physiognomy, or the idea that you can judge character based on someone’s appearance. As noted by Dr. Richard Firth-Godbehere , physiognomy helped to provide the scientific justification for many prejudices. For example, U.S. physician James W. Redfield’s 1852 book, Comparative Physiognomy , compares various groups to...