Can and should emotions be computed?
Tuesday, July 27, 15:00-17:00 UTC+2
(go to event homepage)
This satellite is organized by the Turing Centre Zurich as a panel with prepared entry statements followed by a discussion featuring
- Andreu Casas (Social Sciences, University of Amsterdam)
- Karsten Donnay (Social Sciences, UZH)
- Cécile Evans (Artist)
- Ana Paiva (Computer Science/Engineering, University of Lisbon)
The moderator is Roland Fischer, a science journalist focused on AI.
Emotions are an essential part of what it means to be human. As such, the way we conceive and treat emotions has decisive implications for our self-understanding and, consequently, for the organization of our coexistence. In recent years, a singular approach to emotions has been gaining ground in Artificial Intelligence, commonly known as Artificial Emotional Intelligence or Emotion AI. Its goal is to study non-verbal cues of humans like facial expressions, gestures, tonality of voice, and texts by computational means in order to relate them to the emotional state of individuals. Such technologies have started to find widespread use not only in commercial areas like advertising and healthcare but also in psychology and the social sciences. This satellite event aims to address the social, ethical, epistemological, and philosophical consequences of this computational approach to emotions. It intends to problematize and discuss the underlying assumptions of Emotion AI and their social and political implications by bringing together guests from the academy, the arts and the industry on the relationship between technology and emotions in a moderated panel.