
New 'emotional' robots aim to read human feelings - dnetesn
https://techxplore.com/news/2018-01-emotional-robots-aim-human.html
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hosh
To be clear: From a psychological perspective, the robot and reading of
emotion is cognitive empathy rather than affective empathy.

There are several personality disorders in which there is reduced cognitive or
affective empathy in different combinations. Someone with a high cognitive
empathy, low affective empathy, a willingness and skill in manipulation, and
lack ethics, can cause problems. I don't see how that would be different when
it is a robot or android. (We have problems with socially engineering dopamine
feedback loops to raise "engagement" on our apps and platforms, and as a
society, we have not figured out what we want to do about this yet).

Lastly, in regards to manipulative behavior and trust -- there is an insight
from Crucial Conversations, and that is that when someone feels that another
person has their best interest at heart, it is easier to trust that person
even when talking about difficult subjects. I think that applies here to the
question of AI and ethics. It is not so much as, whether it is more ethical
for a self-driving AI to sacrifice one group of people to save another, but
whether individuals feel that the AI has their best interest at heart
(whatever that means).

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joe_the_user
Well, if I set a series of broad goals I want a robot to help me achieve, it
seems OK for it use high cognitive empathy to get me there. Regular feedback
on how where the robot is in the process would be good.

It seems like affective empathy, actually feeling, would be something you
would only want from any person or person-equivalent since implies they do
what you want only because they like you and they'd expect you to satisfy them
in turn, a problematic relationship to have with a robot. I'd want a robot
doing what I told it to do with various fail-safes and feedback (obviously,
knowing something made me unhappy would be a moment to request feedback).

~~~
hosh
Affecfive empathy is not necessarily the best thing for therapy or coaching,
yet it is often what a person craves for.

Both anti-social personality disorder and narcissistic personality disorder
has reduced or no affective empathy and often high cognitive empathy. However,
I would be more inclined to work with the "pro-social" ASD than someone with
NPD. Someone with NPD is incapable of thinking beyond themselves while someone
with ASD is willing to entertain mutually beneficial arrangements.

You could swing the opposite way too. Someone on the autism spectrum would
have reduced cognitive empathy yet high affective empathy. They tend to care
more, but only after understanding, and then the emotion tends to be more
intense.

Likewise, there are people who feel deeply what everyone else is feeling to
the point where they lost their center and and is unable to function as an
individual.

The main point I was making is that people tend to confuse one type of empathy
for another. And the other is that, what is a good test is if you trust the
other person or AI to have yout best interest at heart.

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joe_the_user
But we're talking about _robots_ , right? Mechanical devices that are
constructed, not human beings of any sort.

It seems like the appropriate analogy would be something like a drug or a
video game. I would claim it is unwise in the extreme to allow a robot with
emotional-influencing abilities/programming to first calculate one's "best
interests" and then go about imposing those best interests _without_ getting
overt, conscious go-ahead from the user.

Of course, even with human beings, you want to interact with people who have
an intention to be good to you and whose idea of "good" is somewhat in
accordance with your own ideas of good, otherwise you get nuts and cults and
so-forth. With robots, devices which function imperfectly and which we don't
want just imposing their "values" on society, jeesh, obviously, one wants
tight control what concept they have of "best interests" along with tight
control on what sort of influencing they do.

The inability of people to see human-robot interactions as rather distinct
from human-human interactions, just makes the situation more urgent.

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hosh
I didn't say the robot had to calculate best interest. I said whether _you_
yourself feels that the robot has your best interest at heart. I am talking
about being in relationship with something that interacts with your emotional
responses.

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userbinator
This is _very much_ in the "uncanny valley" territory for me. The only feeling
a robot needs to read from me is "I don't want a robot showing some fake
'emotion'." It brings to mind the irritatingly insincere, smarmy fake
friendliness that some companies like to exude in their communications.

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otakucode
It seems like they are taking a very difficult approach to this. As humans we
develop the ability to read human feelings through our mirror neurons and
biofeedback from our own body. If you take away the body, and all those nerves
feeding back sensation, you're making the problem far harder. Without a body,
of course, there won't ever really be meaningful emotion in a robot since
emotion is primarily a body-oriented biofeedback thing. That's why people who
experience total facial paralysis lose the ability to feel some emotions, then
lose the ability to remember what feeling them felt like, eventually on to
losing the ability to recognize them in others. Anger, from things I've read,
is the standout on that count. The expression of emotion in your body in a
very real way _is_ the emotion. Put a pencil in your teeth and you will feel
happier because it forces your mouth into a smile. IMO the research screams
that you need a body (or perhaps a simulated simulacra of one) for emotion.
And to recognize emotion well and be able to empathize, mirror neurons seem a
really tried-and-true solution to that.

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everdev
I think people are tuned to read other people's emotions pretty well. The
trick is to actually care and show empathy. Not sure a robot can effectively
do that.

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nuanced
People are tuned to communicate their emotions really well. Reading what
humans are naturally evolved to constantly broadcast about themselves to
others doesn't really take such sophisticated sentiment analysis to read into.

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QAPereo
The challenges of humans with limited affect scream otherwise. It doesn’t take
much for a human to lose the ability to translate emotional signals, a process
we don’t really understand, but you think would be relatively easy to
automate?

