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Clippy — Emotion Prediction Tools
Clippy was unveiled by Microsoft in 1996 as a virtual assistant which would appear when the computer registered the user might be experiencing a difficultly. Clippy serves as an example of one of the very first virtual assistants. Additionally, Clippy is one of the first examples of technology attempting to predict human emotion. -
iCalm — Wearable Emotion Monitoring Tech
Developed in 2001 by Dr. Picard, iCalm was one of the first pieces of wearable technology which attempted to monitor human emotion. The invention used cues like galvanic skin response to determine what an individual was feeling, provide feedback on coping skills, and ultimately help with emotional regulation. The product was designed with autistic individuals in mind. Picture below is an image of what the original product may have looked like. -
Pepper — Socially Interactive Robots
Pepper the robot, debuted in Japan in 2014, and was one of the first socially interactive robots directly available to the public. Pepper was created to interact with humans, to serve as an in-home assistant, and to potentially fill customer service roles. Pepper was designed by SoftBank Robotics, to address the needs of Japan's large senior population. This robot represents not only a major innovation, but a huge shift in the role and purpose of robots such as these into daily at-home life. -
ChatGPT — Emotionally Responsive Technology
ChatGPT builds on the idea of classic search engines, like Google, but adding the idea of human-like interaction. ChatGPT uses the neuroscience ideas of neural nets, where one prompt triggers the recall of numerous related things to inform it's searches. However what makes chat so impressive is it's convincingly human-like level of writing/responding. Wolfram,S.(2023).What Is ChatGPT Doing: ... and Why Does It Work?.United States:Wolfram Media. -
Better Integrated/More Personalized AI
I believe in the near future we will see the development of AI (similar to ChatGPT) which can be more seamlessly integrated into an individual's life. I believe there will be forms more readily accessible which will learn about the individual using them, allowing for personalized responses and suggestions. Similar to what we have now but more of a personal assistant, who learns your likes and dislikes, goals, and responsibilities in order to help you better. -
Emotion-Feeling Robots
I think we will see the development of robots which not only can predict or interpret human emotion, but that can (in some sense) truly feel human emotion as well.