Heart of the Machine: Our Future in a World of Artificial Emotional Intelligence by Richard YonckMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
While recently attending my daughter’s college graduation, I was impressed by the sheer number of students announced as receiving Psychology degrees as their second bachelor’s degree. I was told it was one of the top degrees in the school. I really didn’t see the obvious value, outside of sales and as a step to a grad degree, but “Heart of the Machine” makes the case for the study of psychology, or in particular emotion. What this book makes obvious is that technology is providing ways to “read” people that were not available previously. Through video recording of movements imperceptible to humans, responses that give away inner thought, emotional response to stimulus can be captured, cataloged, and used to optimize, say, buying behavior or knowledge acquisition. And can these capabilities be given to robots, so they can respond to the world with emotional signals, and can read our own signals and react appropriately? Or could you make devices that work as part of a human, allowing the human to repair a possible lack in recognizing the state of others? The book goes through many such scenarios, bringing to light the state of the art in design, and conjecturing where these capabilities can lead us.
I really enjoyed the way this was written, describing issues, the state of the art, and the possible futures of the technology and its usage. I also appreciated the author’s use of recent sci-fi films with “awoke”, or awakening, robots. I consider myself well read, to the point where I’ve-seen-it-before is my usual response to a book. It’s a rare book that can open my mind to something new and exciting. This was one of those books. If I could have asked for more, it would have been for investment advice. BTW, audiobook was well narrated by Robertson Dean.
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