Each week we will share the latest artificial intelligence news and insights, curated for professionals, board members, and entrepreneurs, as we learn to navigate together the opportunities and threats arising from the evolution of AI and technology.
This week in AI
Welcome to AI Forum’s weekly report where we share AI news and insights, curated for students, practitioners, executives and entrepreneurs.
In this week’s report, we discuss the projected growth, and dangers, of Emotion AI and the latest funding news.
Emotion AI technology
2023 will witness increasing usage of Emotion AI technology.
Emotion AI is a technology that detects and interprets human-machine interactions, through text, voice and facial recognition.
Whilst the capabilities of this technology are at an early stage, they are expected to turn up in many settings including Call Centers, Smart Homes and Cities, Healthcare, Fraud Detection, Human Resources and many other parts of our increasingly digital lifestyle.
Building technology that can take into account the emotional state of a citizen, customer or patient can yield positive benefits. However, as we have already learned from Social Media, the digital experience can also be harmful.
Digital interactions are largely dictated by private technology firms. By accepting their Terms and Conditions, we are now effectively “the product”.
With Emotion AI, some firms may experiment with extracting more value from each interaction by exploiting primitive instincts that can be joyful and happy or darker, more powerful reactions such as rejection, betrayal and helplessness.
As this powerful, currently unregulated, technology is being developed and deployed, the risk of Emotional Contagion is rising and, if left unchecked, could lead to a tipping point in global mental health.
Emotional Contagion was first discussed in a fascinating 1993 paper by Hatfield, Cacioppo & Rapson with the following selectively quoted from their conclusion:
“Awareness of the existence of emotional contagion and the associated phenomenon of emotional decoding may prove useful in understanding and perhaps advancing various areas of interpersonal communication….And they may even tell us something about the awesome contemporary power of celebrityhood and of the mass media as these agencies of large-scale emotional and cognitive contagion continue to expand their capacities to define reality for billions of people. ”
Emotional Contagion, as defined in 1993, has evolved into Digital Emotional Contagion discussed in a 2020 research paper by Amit Goldenberg, from Harvard Business School, and James Gross from Stanford, where they offer the following in their introduction:
“After defining emotion contagion, we suggest that one unique feature of digital emotion contagion is that it is mediated by digital media platforms that are motivated to upregulate users’ emotions”
As we reported in last week’s report, society is already grappling with the revelation that the new generation of AI powered chatbots can hallucinate, even as they seem to be more authentic.
With Emotional AI, regulators clearly have yet another huge to-do-list to protect citizens against manipulative “upregulation” of user emotions.
Given the asymmetry in resources, society will probably be dependent on good faith actors to protect against harm, whilst regulators play catch-up.
AI Funding News
In this week’s funding news, the market has had a quiet week, with the notable exception of a mega deal for Sandbox AQ.
Sandbox AQ is a Google spinoff, based in Palo Alto, California, USA. Their recent Venture Series financing of Five Hundred million US Dollars included one notable Google alumni, Eric Schmidt, joining as Chairman of the Board.
The firm is focused on the intersection of two domains: Quantum computing and Artificial Intelligence.
With this large financing, the firm will have the balance sheet to develop products and services for a future where computing power will be far more powerful, challenging the current security infrastructure protecting governments and private corporations.
Istari is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA and raised thirteen million US Dollars in their Seed Round financing. The Schmidt Family Foundation, founded by Erik Schmidt who is also involved with Sandbox AQ, led this round.
From Will Roper, Istari’s CEO:
“Software ate the world, but hardware didn’t. Models and simulations that turn the physical into software remain mostly isolated, not digitally threaded with reality. Istari technology is changing that, expanding the internet into a future engineering metaverse. Unparalleled innovation will follow.”
Koios sold eight million US Dollars in a private Venture Series, as reported in a SEC filing on the 17th February. Based in Chicago, USA, from their website:
“We have been hard at work for over 12 years experimenting, improving performance and developing software around the needs and workflow of interpreting physicians and technicians.
Koios DS Breast is the only FDA-cleared cancer diagnosis software using AI on breast ultrasound images, and works with the physician as an expert on-demand second opinion for classifying suspicious lesions”
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