[ISEA2019] Paper: Ellen Pearlman — AIBO: An Emotionally Intelligent Artificial Intelligence Brainwave Opera – Proof of Concept

Abstract

Keywords: emotionally intelligent artificial intelligence, brain computer interfaces, human computer interaction, performance

Analytic cloudbased speech-to-text engines like the Google API and IBM Watson function through semantic analysis of speech. This is accomplished by assigning weighted values based on the force of an emotional statement, or its magnitude, and an emotional analysis of its score, meaning if the sentence is positive, negative, or neutral. These same analytic qualifiers can be deployed by speech-to-text or text-tospeech chatbots, and developed into analytic engines that are tasked with critical decision making power about customer service, healthcare, jurisprudence, social sorting, employment, and migration, among others. Private corporations like Facebook’s Building 8 and the U.S. Military’s DARPA Agency [1] [2] are funding research to develop semantic analysis of thoughts in the brain capable of interacting directly with computers. AIBO, a work-in-progress emotionally intelligent artificial intelligence brain opera presents a rapid prototype of a built feedback loop between EEG signals from a human brain and an emotionally intelligent artificial intelligence entity driven by machine learning. It explores the hegemony of algorithmic decisions vs. a human being’s messy emotions, both as a performer’s brainwaves are displayed on their body as flashes of varicolored light, and through the projection of a colored graphic indicating a semantic analysis in a connected feedback loop.

  • Ellen Pearlman is a new media artist, curator and critic. She  is on faculty at Parsons/New School New York, USA, and an Assistant Professor Senior Researcher at RISEBA University in Riga, Latvia. A Fulbright World Learning Specialist, she was awarded an EU 2019 Vertigo STARTS Residency. She is also Director of ThoughtWorks Arts in New York City.

Full text (PDF) p. 416-418

This prototype was made with the assistance of programmers Sarah Ing, Doori Rose, Danni Liu, and LED necklace builder Cynthia O’Neil, and the sponsorship of Art-AHack™ and ThoughtWorks New York.