DENVER (KDVR) – If Netflix’s “Black Mirror” has taught viewers anything, it’s that holding artificial intelligence at arm’s length may help you avoid starring in your own personal twilight zone conundrum.
But now, researchers have sidestepped that concern and are instead teaming up with face-analyzing artificial intelligence in order to rank the nation’s 100 largest cities in order to uncover which is the happiest.
How these rankings were tabulated
With the assistance of Microsoft’s face recognition API known as Azure, House Fresh put together several best-of lists, including one that named Colorado as the third happiest state in the country.
To create these rankings, House Fresh used the facial recognition tool to scan Instagram photos taken in each of those cities and gave them a happiness score ranging between 0 and 1 that estimated the photographed person’s “emotions based on characteristics and expressions.”
After all of the photos in a given city were awarded a happiness score, an average was tabulated, which was used to compare with other states.
Another ranked list created by the photo scanning Azure revealed that Colorado as a whole was also among the top 10 “smiliest” states in the nation.
Where Denver ranks among the nation’s happiest cities
When it comes to a less broad-stroked ranking list, Azure was a bit less rewarding to the Colorado capital in the city rankings.
According to these results, the Mile High City was deemed less happy than the state as a whole, walking away with the 16th slot.
House Fresh: The top 20 Happiest Cities in the U.S.
Here are those rankings with the correlating happiness score ranging between 0 and 1.
- Concord, California (79.14)
- Provo, Utah (74.95)
- Knoxville, Tennessee (74.72)
- Charleston, South Carolina (74.17)
- Mesa, Arizona (71.48)
- Cape Coral, Florida (70.89)
- Ogden, Utah (69.15)
- Nashville, Tennessee (68.31)
- Sarasota, Florida (66.78)
- New Orleans, Louisiana (65.87)
- Grand Rapids, Michigan (64.92)
- Des Moines, Iowa (64.86)
- Honolulu, Hawaii (64.74)
- Wichita, Kansas (64.26)
- San Francisco, California (62.13)
- Denver (61.11)
- Orlando, Florida (60.70)
- Tulsa, Oklahoma (60.51)
- Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (60.35)
- Baton Rouge, Louisiana (60.07)
After looking down this list, it would seem that Denver’s less-smiley citizenry has some work to do when it comes to improving their outward-appearing attitude, but being counted among the top 20% of any ranking is, more often than not, something to carry with pride.
It may be a bit of a ploy in the long run, but if this study is anything to go by, it seems that artificial intelligence is capable of divvying out some moderately uplifting data without sending the recipient into an existentially driven crisis.