Rosalind W. Picard

Abstract

Machines that might actually “have” feelings is the key area of affective computing that I expressed serious doubt about in my 1997 book Affective Computing. I think the discussions there, and in a later book chapter (Picard 2003) on this topic are still timely and I will not plan to add to them here. Researchers in the last decade have obtained dozens of scientific findings illuminating important roles of emotion in intelligent human functioning, even when it looks like a person is showing no emotion. These findings have reshaped scientific understanding of emotion and have inspired a number of researchers to consider that emotional mechanisms might be more valuable than previously believed. Consequently, a number of researchers have charged ahead with building machines that have several affective abilities, especially: recognizing, expressing, modelling, communicating, and responding to emotion. And, within these areas, a number of new criticisms and challenges have arisen. The rest of this paper addresses such matters.