David Casacuberta

Handbook of Research on Synthetic Emotions and Sociable Robotics: New Applications in Affective Computing and Artificial Intelligence

Decades of scientific research on neurophysiology have proven emotions are not simply a minor aspect of human activity, but rather a fundamental one. The Handbook of Research on Synthetic Emotions and Sociable Robotics: New Applications in Affective Computing and Artificial Intelligence focuses on the integration of emotions into artificial environments such as computers and robotics. Written by an international collaboration of experts within the field, this Handbook of Research covers topics such as emotion simulation and emotion synthetic development.

E-Science and the data deluge

This paper attempts to show how the “big data” paradigm is changing science through offering access to millions of database elements in real time and the computational power to rapidly process those data in ways that are not initially obvious. In order to gain a proper understanding of these changes and their implications, we propose applying an extended cognition model to the novel scenario.

DJ el Niño: expressing synthetic emotions with music

The purpose of this work is twofold: (1) to present an artistic experiment on how to use artificial intelligence to develop a “different kind” of DJ, and (2) to test a cognitive model on how music expresses emotions. Based on a former model conceived by the author, electronic music loops were tagged according to the type and intensity of the expressed emotion. Then, using a feedback model, an artificial personality was arranged, which was affected by the music and played the loops depending on the emotional state the artificial personality was in. The efficiency and credibility of the model was tested in a “live event” during the Z2000 art festival in Berlin, with encouraging results.

Ethical and Technical Aspects of Emotions to Create Empathy in Medical Machines

This chapter analyzes the ethical challenges in healthcare when introducing medical machines able to understand and mimic human emotions. Artificial emotions is still an emergent field in artificial intelligence, so we devote some space in this paper in order to explain what they are and how we can have an machine able to recognize and mimic basic emotions. We argue that empathy is the key emotion in healthcare contexts. We discuss what empathy is and how it can be modeled to include it in a medical machine. We consider types of medical machines (telemedicine, care robots and mobile apps), and describe the main machines that are in use and offer some predictions about what the near future may bring. The main ethical problems we consider in machine medical ethics are: privacy violations (due to online patient databases), how to deal with error and responsibility concerning machine decisions and actions, social inequality (as a result of people being removed from an e-healthcare system), and how to build trust between machines, patients, and medical professionals.

One Bright Byte: Dōgen and the Re-embodiment of Digital Technologies

In this chapter, I argue that key functions of digital apps are based on a disembodied nature of our selves which is not compatible with our human nature. The solution is not just to redesign those digital apps—a proposal that blindly accepts the premises of technological determinism—but to reconsider the whole concept of what it means to be human. I give a brief sketch of the practical philosophy and metaphysics of the thirteenth-century Japanese philosopher Eihei Dōgen to present another view of what it means to be human, in order to conceptualize a re-embodied self in the World Wide Web.

Using Dreyfus’ legacy to understand justice in algorithm-based processes

As AI is linked to more and more aspects of our lives, the need for algorithms that can take decisions that are not only accurate but also fair becomes apparent. It can be seen both in discussions of future trends such as autonomous vehicles or the issue of superintelligence, as well as actual implementations of machine learning used to decide whether a person should be admitted in certain university or will be able to return a credit. In this paper, we will use Dreyfus’ account on ethical expertise to show that, to give an AI some ability to make ethical judgements, a pure symbolic, conceptual approach is not enough. We also need the ability to make sense of the surroundings to reframe and define situations in a dynamic way, using multiple perspectives in a pre-reflective way.

A Computational, Cognitive, and Situated Framework for Emotional Social Simulations

Human emotions and social processes are evolutionary intertwined, as the result of neuromodulatory mechanisms that define the nature of how bodies interact with the world and create strategies with other bodies and agents. This article presents the previous simulations of TPR, TPR 2.0 and The Game of Emotions. Ideas are also justified in order to achieve the next research level into social emotional simulations. This article describes a defense of the epistemological value of computer simulations for the analysis of emotions and social interactions. Finally, the elements of the model are described as well as is defined a basic sketch of the basic control algorithm.