Emotional AI team grant win from UKRI-JST Joint Call on Artificial Intelligence and Society

We’re more than a little pleased to announce that our application (‘Emotional AI in Cities: Cross Cultural Lessons from UK and Japan on Designing for An Ethical Life’) for funding from the UKRI-JST Joint Call on Artificial Intelligence and Society has been successful.

A 3-year project beginning Jan 1st 2020, we continue work on biometric and online technologies that sense, learn and interact with emotions, moods, attention and intentions. Only 5 or so years ago, this was the preserve of start-ups trying to create services out of affective computing. Nowadays the largest companies in the West and Japan are deploying emotional AI and empathic technology systems in cars, streets, classrooms, homes and more.

For both Japan and the UK, what are the societal implications of the emergence of these technologies, how will they be deployed in our cities, what is coming next, how do citizens feel about it, are policies appropriate, and what of data ethics in societies with quite different histories and demographics? Also, while it is easy to focus on less desirable elements, what of the good uses of these technologies? Thus, our overall objective is to enable a cross-cultural, citizen-led, multisectoral, anticipatory and interdisciplinary response to emotional AI in UK and Japan. While these are two of the most advanced nations in AI, the social contexts and histories from which these technologies emerge differ, providing rich scope for mutual learning.

Investigators: Prof. Vian Bakir (Bangor), Dr. Lachlan Urquhart (Edinburgh), Dr. Diana Miranda (Northumbria), Prof. Andrew McStay (Bangor Uni’), Prof. Peter Mantello (Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific), Dr. Hiromi Tanaka (Meiji), Prof. Nader Ghotbi (Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific), Prof. Hiroshi Miyashita (Chuo).