Concord 'happiest' city designation gleaned from smiling selfies scraped by facial recognition program
CONCORD -- Online platforms often use data to rate cities for their livability, such as "most affordable," or "most family-friendly." But a surprising new study shows that people in Concord are the happiest. And the way it was determined is a glimpse into the future for us all.
Concord's Todos Santos Plaza is an old-fashioned town square and, as she sat on a park bench, Swati Vishwanathan wasn't surprised people seemed happy there.
"I've seen some of the happiest people in this square," she said. "I've seen some of the kindest human interaction, gestures. I've seen life in action in this square."
But now, a business analytics company called HouseFresh has discovered just how happy people are there. They analyzed tens of thousands of Instagram selfie photos from all over the country, using a Microsoft facial recognition program that recognizes and ranks the sincerity of a person's smile. When they crunched the numbers, analysts were dumbfounded that selfies coming from Concord had the highest percentage of genuine smiles in all of America.
"We do a lot of these studies, and you get the usual, New York and the big cities taking all the credit, and that's obviously not so interesting," said HouseFresh founder, Danny Ashton. "But in this case, it was--that Concord stood out. Because it stood out, not just in the United States, but in the State of California as well."
It's especially shocking because, as a state, California ranked dead last in the number of happy faces. The study found that 79% of people in Concord seemed happy, while Californians, on average, scored less than 39% happiness. San Francisco ranked 15th, but no other Bay Area city made the list. The results even had people in Concord scratching their heads.
"I saw it on Instagram, and I was as like, Concord, happiest place? It kind of threw me for a loop because no one expected Concord," said city native Kevin Sandoval.
But Arshdeep Singh and Shemara Ferman thought it is Concord's casual diversity that makes everyone feel comfortable there.
"You do get a lot of different generations here," said Ferman, who lives in Oakland but works in Concord. "So, you get to see all of these different spaces filled with different ethnicities, different family types. Yeah, so I can see why that's a thing."
But Singh seemed like he would be happy anywhere.
"I'm too happy!" he said laughing. "People are telling me, 'Are you on something?' No, no, I'm just happy, man. I'm just living life. I love my life! I'm happy, for real!"
It's good news for Concord, but even the study's creators are concerned about what artificial intelligence may bring to the future. We once feared Big Brother watching us - now he's actually judging our moods.
"Yeah, you hope it will be used for good but, yeah, a little scary to know that public data is out there," said Ashton. "It's one of the reasons I don't share any of my images on Instagram or anything like that."
It's a brave new world, where even something as human as "happiness" can be measured by a machine.
