of the mind & heart, & perspicacity

Let's be clear. Machines are not capable of being in love, cry, laugh or be lonely. The same machines, however, use data to accumulate & understand how people behave. And mimic emotion.

Why is this important?

Many companies, in retail, healthcare and finance, already use this to at least show empathy toward their customers. And independently, actively influence, & manipulate human emotion - i.e. make us laugh, cry, feel sad or happy, be comforted or have a listening ear. Machines behave like humans as they write articles, create paintings and compose tunes; on many occasions are quite undecipherable from humans, us. Not just entertain, but influence our decisions and lives.

And as we start to think and dream of machines as co-workers, managers and policy makers; just how far is too far? Why stop here, and allow machines to drive us around, control our homes, entertain and manage our finances? Why not also have these machines replace key human leaders like our politicians, or CEOs. Why not have these machines make, the best choices for us. After all, we all just want it easy; all the time.

Easy not just in the physical sense as machines are far stronger and faster. But also, ultimately, easier to make decisions for us. The average person makes hundreds, if not thousands of decisions each day, almost all are trivial, but occasionally there is one with a lasting impact. So what drives people’s beliefs, decisions and behaviours? We often already find ways to dismiss evidence that we don’t like. And the opposite is true, too: when evidence seems to support our preconceptions, we are less likely to look too closely for flaws. It is not easy to master our emotions while assessing information that matters to us, not least because our emotions can lead us astray in different directions. The apparent choice between “fact” and “feeling,” or between “cognition” and “culture,” is an apparent dilemma. As both are related and address different pieces of the decision-making puzzle.

Much of the U.S.A. for example, still thinks Trump won the last election. When it comes to interpreting the world around us, we need to realise that our feelings can trump our expertise. This explains why we buy things we don’t need, fall for the wrong kind of romantic partner, or vote for politicians who betray our trust. In particular, it explains why we so often buy into statistical claims that even a moment’s thought would tell us cannot be true. Sometimes, we want to be fooled. We want it easy.

So what is true or false in this era of "fake-ness". Scientists posit hard truth is based on evidence; and the possibility that you are right and I am wrong based on data. But, in the 'world' of the Arts and Belief, questions on right and wrong is supported by what I think argued from a viewpoint and firmly held positions just based on emotions. Music, theatre, & art have and continue to play a profoundly important role in society it is ever so vital to not only just argue about polemic & evidence, but also for the emotional side of human experience to be fairly represented. The, it's no longer just evidence and data, but how well one side is argued, then viewed.

Motivated reasoning is thinking through a topic with the aim, conscious or unconscious, of reaching a particular kind of conclusion. In a game of footy (Australian Rules Football), we see the fouls committed by the other team but overlook the sins of our own side. We are more likely to notice what we want to notice. People are not immune to motivated reasoning. Under some circumstances our expertise can even become a disadvantage. With a machine, this is not a disadvantage.

Artificial Intelligence as we know it, learns and understands language, content and process. One important distinction is between emotion, which is episodic, experiential, and contextual, and beliefs about emotion, which are semantic, conceptual, and decontextualised. This distinction is important in understanding the discrepancies that often occur when people are asked to report on feelings they are currently experiencing versus those that they are not currently experiencing. The accessibility model provides an organising framework for understanding self-reports of emotion and suggests some new directions for research.

Dusting off the old, but ever so relevant word that describes this appropriately is perspicacity, or plain sapience. The common dictionary describes it as the quality of having a ready insight into things; shrewdness. And in this realm, the mix of emotion, beliefs about emotion; are guided by an ability to motivate toward an outcome is peculiarly human. It is beyond neural networks, and requires both heart and mind in totality and to truly feel outside of our 'normal' sensory capabilities. So, perhaps for machines it's 'hasta la vista'. For now.