Our founder Brian Dolan participated in a recent panel at the AI Showbiz Summit moderated by Steve Ardire, where he shared the virtual stage with fellow panelists Rafaella Camera, Head of Innovation for Accenture XR and Emily K. Dalton, Sci-fi writer. The topic of the panel was “Humans, Machines and Our Augmented Intelligence Digital Future”. The panelists provided a wide perspective of expertise in the field from AR to Science Fiction and AI.
Emotional Intelligence for Machines
Steve Ardire, moderator and “Merchant of Light” is a big proponent of emotion AI, advising many startups in this field. He started the conversation with a question on how emotion AI will expand the limits of human perception to create more dynamic experiences.
The idea of making an AI capable of perceiving and responding to human emotion is fascinating. For Brian, the most exciting part is seeing how we fail at it because it illuminates so much about our own perceptions about AI. Our failures show us surprising insights into what is really needed to create emotional communications. As of now, the technology is limited and the experiments are entertaining, such as the first AI-written movie Sunspring, which showcases all the elements of a compelling and interesting storyline but fails to deliver any cohesive plot. While these “failures” are funny, they are also educational. They highlight the complexities of true human emotion and expression while helping us ascertain what is really needed for humans to someday have two-way emotional dialogues with machines.
Emotion synthesis is a new area of emotion AI that promises major advances in AI, Games, Robots, and IoT, simulating sentience, and emotional states.
The Impact on Consumers
The consumer experience has been rapidly evolving and will be further reshaped by the pandemic. Digital health is an area where Brian has a long history and has been able to have a direct impact through his experience building products and companies that are positively impacting the lives of thousands. This passion and interest expand into other areas such as computational psychology and artificial psychology which can be experienced in virtual worlds. These immersive experiences or embodiment therapies are designed to help people overcome many cognitive challenges.
When it comes to addiction programs, the one that is most effective is Alcoholics Anonymous and their key statement is I can’t think my way into better acting, but I can act my way into better thinking.
Brian Dolan
Virtual reality or embodiment therapy applies the same approach by making people act their way into better behaviors. Brian continues, “Change starts with changing how you act. You must act first and modify your thinking later to bring about effective and long-lasting change.”
Could Emotion AI be the Catalyst for Creating a Mirror World?
Mirror Worlds, a book by Yale computer scientist David Gelernter, describes the coming Mirror World as the digital representation of the real world. With real-time emotional intelligence in machines in conjunction with AR and XR, does that move us closer to making a virtual representation of the world possible?
According to Brian, in thinking about frontier technologies acting as a catalyst for Mirror World there is the presumption that it hasn’t happened before. In fact, humans have historically constructed mirror worlds through stories and books.
You can take a good novel and it is emotions in a container that are being delivered from one person across time and space.
Brian Dolan
According to Brian, Mirror World probably already exists in a small format, because as humans, “we’re already thinking of our experience as being something outside of ourselves and being driven by something else, from our novels to our AR, so it will come about.”
While our virtual and digital worlds will become more integrated, humans will always have a sense of entitlement over digital realms.
Automated Acceleration to Usher in a Digital Future
Frontier technologies such as VR can act as conduits to accelerated innovation. Brian views automation acceleration as something that will most certainly happen in the future. However, ensuring that humans continue to have meaningful work is key to this. In comparison with past societies, even those of just 100 years ago, we are living in a utopia. Humans are currently satisfied with basic tools such as electricity and water that have provided a way of life that wasn’t available to our ancestors and this gives us the illusion of thinking the environment provides everything we need when in reality it doesn’t. Very few could survive if dropped into nature with no tools or shelter. Just check out the show Naked and Afraid to see how challenging it is to survive without the creature comforts to which we are accustomed.
Automated Acceleration that is not severe and well balanced will disrupt this way of thinking and create a more meaningful civilization.
Even with his many innovations and accomplishments, at his core, Brian remains a mathematician with a deep interest in using his knowledge to tackle the world’s biggest challenges such as climate change and better systems of health. His interests in computational psychology and artificial personality are areas he explores through the use of video games and visual experiences. Together with the team at Verdant, Brian is actively working to forward health and agricultural tech and develop technologies that are working to resolve the UN Sustainable Development goals.
This was a great panel discussion. Have a listen to the full interview here.
