AAAS Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion

News & Events: Public Lecture

Affective Computing: Toward Computers that Recognize and Respond to Human Emotion
20 May 2004

 

Prototypes of interactive computer systems that can begin to detect and label aspects of human emotional expression; respond to users who are experiencing frustration and other negative emotions with emotionally supportive interactions; demonstrate components of human skills such as active listening, empathy, and sympathy, have been built. These working systems support the prediction that a computer can begin to undo some of the negative feelings it causes by helping a user manage his or her emotional state. We also have new evidence that computers can exhibit specific "relational" behaviors that promote feelings of trust, caring, and likeability over the long term. We have built an agent that achieved these results in a one month interaction with dozens of users. This talk will show examples and applications of new technology that sense and respond to emotion, and then raise and discuss potential concerns and objections regarding its use. Implications of emotionally responsive and relational synthetic agents for religious understandings of the person will also be discussed.

Keynote speaker:

• Rosalind W. Picard, Ph.D., Director of Affective Computing Research, Associate Professor of Media Arts and Sciences, M.I.T. Media Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Respondent:

• Paul Root Wolpe, Ph.D., Senior Faculty Associate, Department of Psychiatry, University of Pennsylvania