Summary: Happiness is closely linked to integration with others.

The artificial intelligence is used to find answers to a wide range of contemporary challenges, from work to medicine, from sustainability to transport.
And Dr. Kazuo Yano, Fellow of Hitachi Ltd., believes that the AI can also help us to be happier.
But that does not mean reducing humans to robots or our emotions to standardized / programmable pulse.
On the contrary, the purpose of the work of Dr.
Yano is to use the 'Ai to analyze data that reflect our happiness, in order to identify those small and simple changes in our lives that can improve our mood and our emotional state.
"We're pretty sure that this planet can become scientifically happier, thanks to the use of data and technology," said Dr.
Yano.
"However, much of the research is still based on questionnaires and surveys.
Our uniqueness lies in the fact that, along with the questionnaires, we use the most advanced technologies.
With smartphones in hand to over one billion people, I think there are margins to make this planet a better and happier place. "
Yano has developed starting from the idea itself.
Since 2006, Dr. Yano wore a wrist device for fitness, not to count steps, how to plot his happiness.
"We started to measure human behavior about 15 years ago," he explains.
"And finally, about four years ago, we have developed a technology to quantify the happiness of people - using a sensor present in our smartphone, the accelerometer".
Today you can do so using an app for iPhone or Android.
"Instead of asking users to use a dedicated hardware, it is enough that download an app," he says.
Of course, defining the mood of a person is not as simple as measure movements.
We must interpret the information collected by the sensor.
To this end, Dr. Yano and his team collected data for over ten million days, people from different organizations that took part in the project (businesses, schools or hospitals).
The dataset contains data from the motion sensors collected at a level of milliseconds, including the monitored signals from infrared sensors during the meeting face to face, in addition to the questionnaires completed by the participants.
"If you're sad, you can not concentrate and do not eat and sleep well," he says.
"I'm pretty universal and consistent signals, which do not depend on the culture of origin."
Thanks to 'Artificial Intelligence, it was noticed that there is a high correlation between those who claim to be happy in the questionnaire and the way he moves.
"The patterns of behavior that indicate a greater correlation with happiness are related to moving it from beginning to end, and when subjects stop moving until they begin to do so," said Yano.
"Happy people are flexible and adapt in different situations.
Unhappy people lose flexibility.
And that's a good sign to be able to quantify the happiness of people or group of people. "
We're not talking about the individual level happiness, Yano added, but of our behavior towards other people and the impact it has on the rest of the group.
"For each person, we can quantify how much a person makes others happy and contribute to the group's happiness level," he says.
"Interestingly, our data clearly show that the sum of human happiness is, indeed, namely, proportional to the sum of the behaviors that make you happy the next.
Happiness can not be achieved individually, it is related to the interaction with others and the good relations with others. "
The data were analyzed using artificial intelligence to define a score, which has a high correlation with specific types of physical movement.
The researchers have the chance to measure happiness or well-being of someone at any given time, allowing you to see what improves mood and what not.
"By analyzing these data, we are able to identify and provide solutions that can help people be happier," he says.
And here it comes in the app.
It uses the accelerometer in this smartphone to track movement and monitor happiness every ten minutes.
In addition to collecting the information, the app also uses as a parameter that defines Dr. Yano "the group competing for happiness" - a concept that may seem dystopian, but aims to give people the tools to work well together.
"Rate your ability to do good to others, and helps people improve," he says.
"The app provides you with a reminder in the morning, suggesting an activity that you can do to make other people happy.
There are thousands in the app, and you can not just pick one that you like, but you can create your own personnel.
In this way, every day give users form their own idea of how to make others happy. "
The app might suggest you to meet someone new, talk to someone who has not seen in time or not to be late at work to spend more time with family or friends.
It is taken every day a little change and effort to pick the app and share it with your followers takes less than a minute, said Dr.
Yano.
"That little change has an incredible impact on people's lives," she adds.
Specifically, the app encourages us to refocus our attention on the positive aspects.
"By nature we are very sensitive creatures," says Dr. Yano.
"Even if 99% of our day is positive, when there is something negative we focus on this, and let him have a strong impact on our day."
Although the company sometimes does not help to be positive.
Thanks to the app, says Yano, you can balance these aspects, taking advantage of a social features, such as sharing, to spread a positive attitude.
Over the last year, over 4,000 people have tested the app monitoring progress through a happiness index called "psychological capital", an idea born Fred Luthans, expert in the field of management science and currently a professor at the University Nebraska Lincoln.
Luthans suggests that the improvement of those scores can produce profit growth for companies.
Not just in terms of revenue: the benefits go far beyond the job, says Dr. Yano.
"Happiness can not be classified and divided between personal or work - is the sum of the two," he adds.
For this reason, and to prevent the misuse of such a powerful tool, only those who are using can see his "happiness score", not his head, and even human resources.
"It can only display the aggregated data, because it could be a risk that the data of a single person could be used inappropriately," he notes.
In addition to the workplace, Dr. Yano believes that the app can also be useful for older people by helping them to cope with loneliness and sadness.
"One Life to centenarians with health problems without happiness would not want anyone, but quite another thing would be happy to live a hundred years," said Dr.
Yano.
"I hope that this technology will be useful to solve many different problems."
This is one of the most effective ways in which Ai, if well used, could help us to be happier and healthier.
Innovation for the future Modern life is full of data, and almost every day new technologies are developed, how can we use them to really make a difference?
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From Wired