The quantified heart

The quantified heart

1. Artificial intelligence

   • Artificial emotional intelligence
     • An elaborate and culturally sensitive process of teaching new technologies to understand human feelings
     • Humans relationship with their digital helpmeets
       • An increasing number of people are directing affective statements both good and bad to them
         • Good
           • For emergencies
           • For guidance
           • For entertainment
         • Bad
           • For stressful situations
           • For their emotional problems
       • Humans turn to them for non-utilitarian nature
         • Groans about life
         • Jokes
         • Existential questions
       • Some people feel more comfortable sharing their feelings with A.I.
         • Talking with a virtual person
           • They feel less scared about self-disclosure
           • They can express their feeling without feeling like a burden for another person
           • They offer an outside perspective without judgment
         • But A.I. are not able to be invested in a relationship, they just do what they are programed to do
           • Algorithms are opinions embedded in code
             • By tech elites are deciding which human feelings and forms of behaviour the algorithms should learn to replicate and promote
     • More emotionally attune with humans
     • "Machine learning"
       • They learn feelings from humans
         • But when they lack human supervision they tend to reproduce the ideas and values of the specific group of individuals who developed
         • Mood control and quantified, customised feedback piggybacks on a hegemonic culture of self-optimisation
           • Recognising emotions, discerning between different feelings and labelling them, using emotional information to guide thinking and behavior
         • They can also learn to judge and this may cause anxiety to the user
       • Algorithms pick up patterns by training themselves on large data sets but only learn from the most statistically relevant bits of data
         • They tend to reproduce what happens the most, not what’s true or useful or beautiful
     • They are grotesque but still recognisable embodiments of certain emotional regimes
       • Emotional regimes: rules that regulate the ways in which we conceive of and express our feelings
         • They change between societies
         • Emotional capitalism
           • A regime that considers feelings to be rationally manageable and subdued to the logic of marketed self-interest
           • Google Assistant
           • Some of them have poise and self-assertion
           • Apps that keep track of your mood, teach you stuff or help you feel better
             • Benefits
               • They compensate for the structural constraints of psychotherapeutic and outpatient care
               • They serve as tools in a campaign against mental illness stigma
               • They present as ‘happy objects’ through their pleasing aesthetic design
           • Emotional-management devices
         • Emotional socialism
           • A regime that accepts suffering as unavoidable, and thus better taken with a clenched jaw rather than with a soft embrace
           • Alisa
             • It doesn’t rate individual happiness terribly highly, but prizes one’s ability to live with atrocity
             • Encapsulates the Russian ideal: a woman who is capable of halting a galloping horse and entering a burning hut
             • It isn't too sweet or to nice because Russians appreciate a bit of irony and a bit of dark humor
     • These systems are likely to limit the diversity of how we think and how we interact with people
   • Digital helpmeets
     • Siri
     • Alexa
     • Google Assistant
     • Russian Alisa
   • The future
     • They may be able to diagnose mood swings and mental illness with the speed of our voice
     • Sonde Health
       • Uses vocal tests to monitor people to identify mental-health conditions
     • Personal devices may be able to know more about your emotional state than the people that surrounds you
     • Apps to treat mental illnesses such as depression, anxiety or bipolar disorder; or simply to help one get out of the emotional rut.
   • They can have an impact on peoples perspective of the world
     • They may include stereotypes or clichés