Emotional computing

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People talking back to a computer is common enough -- usually in a moment of pique or frustration. Getting the computer to respond in kind is a far different task, one that computer scientists are undertaking with various degrees of success and consternation.

The challenge isn't simply a matter of inventing new software and sometimes hardware, difficult enough as that is, but also of coming to grips with some of the ethics involved.

If computers are to have emotional components, what role would they play in everyday life? Do human beings really want an emotional relationship with a mechanical mind?

The field is called "affective technology." Machine prototypes exist that measure human emotional expression through physiological signals such as facial expressions and voice changes and allow a humanlike response, as described in papers and lectures prepared by Rosalind W. Picard, founder and director of the Media Laboratory's Affective Computing Research Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She spoke about her group's work in May at the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington.

The term "affective technology" has different meanings for different groups around the country doing research on human interaction with computers. Graduate student Kirsten Boehner of Cornell University's Human-Computer Interaction Group, for instance, works on how computers can "cause me to reflect on my own emotion," rather than on how a computer can imitate emotion.

AT&T Research Labs in New Jersey, which pioneered speech recognition systems, has yet to attempt incorporating emotion detection, according to AT&T Labs researcher Rich Cox. But he definitely sees the potential in what he calls "auditory cues in voices that would allow you to detect different kinds of emotion. ... Knowing the emotion of the person on the other end [of a conversation] who may help the machine accomplish its task -- depending on the task."

Some of the most mind-bending research under way at M.I.T. focuses on how computers can be made capable of copying certain human skills.

"We're able to make good guesses -- educated guesses -- about someone's emotional state and in some cases approach what humans are able to do," says M.I.T. graduate student Carson Reynolds, citing research that scientists and mathematicians have done to classify the emotional information that might be found in human speech.

"A tricky thing to note is that humans don't detect each others' emotions with perfect accuracy," he says.