Colloquium Cognitive Systems

Towards Artificial Empathic Technology

Dr. Patrick Gebhard (DFKI)

Abstract:
The talk introduces a framework for artificial empathic technology. It models empathy as a consistent processing and action principle: from signals to analysis and interpretation to the regulation of emotional states and regulative social interaction dynamics to appropriate expression. The starting point is computer model-based methods for emotion recognition, along with more detailed computational modeling of emotions; the underlying concepts of emotion and empathy are critically discussed. Examples from current and previous projects illustrate the building blocks and highlight areas where further research is needed. A compact evaluation framework (explainability, robustness, fairness, interaction quality) serves as a checklist for research and prototyping.
About:
Patrick is a Research Fellow and Principal Researcher at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence GmbH (DFKI) in Saarbrücken, Germany. Since 2007, he is head of the Affective Computing group in the Cognitive Assistants department. His research focuses on Affective Computing, a sub-field of Artificial Intelligence centered on human emotional intelligence and its employment for Human-Computer Interaction. He has fully coordinated or taken work package leads in several national and European research projects. He acquired a long-term experience with computational models for affect and social behavior and their employment to model socially interactive agents and their evaluation.