Affective Computing — The Computer That Smiles, For No Reason in Particular
Looking with a grin to the future of computers that feel things…
There is a strong argument that the wider technological community’s obsessive pursuit of gains in artificial intelligence represents an equally obsessive need for we humans to gain understanding of ourselves. What marvellous machines — ‘machines’ — we are, that all our tremendous faculties should serve primarily to conceal us from ourselves and further mystify our already slim grasp of our ends, our essential nature, and our purpose.
Nevermind how vast and impenetrable that cloud of unknowing might be — the further we study artificial intelligence, the more we are indeed learning about ourselves. One insight yielded to us by AI pursuits, one which argues strongly for itself, is that emotion is not distinct from intelligence, but a thread of a much broader modular intelligence. This is the insight on which the entire field of affective computing is based.
Affective computing constitutes the study and development of computational systems which are able to recognize, model, process, and simulate human emotions, with lifelike accuracy in both interpretation and representation. You may have seen affective computing in a live environment, helping revolutionise…
