Welcome to Feeling Machines
Feeling Machines examines the evolving intersection of emotion and computation. This blog interrogates how machines learn to recognize, interpret, and simulate human feeling and what this means for our collective future.
Through critical analysis of affective technologies, we’ll explore the technical systems that quantify emotion and their broader sociocultural implications.
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Can Machines Feel?
While there is evidence that emotions and feelings can be mapped computationally, there is little to no indication whether machines can actually “feel”. This blog will explore if and how that is possible, if and why creating it would be even good, and the impacts it may have.
Affective Computing
Affective computing, also called Empathic Computing, sits at the intersection of computer science, psychology, and cognitive science. Dr. Rosalind Picard coined the term in a 1995 paper and subsequent 1997 book published by MIT Press, where she articulated the vision that computers should have "the ability to recognize, understand, even to have and express emotions".
Whether it is technically feasible for machines to have human emotions is unclear. However, their ability to simulate emotions and elicit them within us (humans) will profoundly impact our society.
Following Picard’s work, this domain has expanded to encompass emotion recognition systems, emotional synthesis in machines, affective wearables, and physiological sensing technologies. The field now spans industry and academia, with applications ranging from healthcare and autism research to consumer electronics and social robotics.
Examples of "affective" technologies include facial expression analysis systems, voice-based emotion detection, physiological wearables that track emotional states through biometric data, and emotionally responsive AI interfaces that adapt to user frustration or engagement. The space remains nascent yet rapidly evolving at the intersection of commercial innovation and critical questions about human-machine relationships.
As these technologies become increasingly embedded in our daily lives, feeling-machines explores technical implementations and their philosophical, ethical, and cultural implications.
The author of this newsletter
My name is Amina. My research spans emotional AI, embodied computing, and the future of human-machine interfaces.
Other Resources
MIT Media Lab's Affective Computing Research Group
IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing
The Emotion Machine (Marvin Minsky)
Empathic Computing Lab (University of South Australia)
The Society of Mind (Marvin Minsky)
I Am a Strange Loop (Douglas Hofstadter)
Association for the Advancement of Affective Computing (AAAC)
