Emotional Artificial Intelligence and the Soul, featuring MIT's Rosalind Picard
Our evening will feature MIT’s Rosalind Picard, author of Affective Computing, the book that launched the field by that name, enabling robots and technology to develop skills of emotional intelligence, or “emotion AI”. Picard is Founder and Director of the Affective Computing Research Group at the MIT Media Lab, co-director of the MIT Media Lab’s Advancing Wellbeing Initiative, and Faculty Chair of MIT’s Mind+Hand+Heart Initiative. She has co-founded two companies Empatica, Inc. providing wearable sensors and analytics to improve health, and Affectiva, Inc. delivering emotion AI technology including recognition of facial and vocal emotion expressions.
Professor Picard will briefly illustrate (in video projection) some examples of the state-of-the-art in emotion A.I. Also, given Roz’s understanding as a Christian of our particular human uniquenesses, we’ve asked her to comment on two more topics:
1.) In spite of Hollywood imaginations, what are tangible qualities of humanness that we’ll probably never see superseded by A.I.?
2.) Risks in the potential for bias have been elevated as a concern in national headlines, so what is truly up-for-grabs in the A.I. winner-take-all world where we may or may not have the right safeguards in play?