AI-Feel The Texts

"AI-Feel The Texts" explores how AI chatbots decipher human emotions through text-based communication, emphasizing that AI's interpretation of emotions is a programmed function, not an emotional experience.

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Abstract

"AI-Feel The Texts" offers an artistic exploration of how AI chatbots perceive human emotions through text-based communication. This project transcends the question of whether AI can mimic human responses, focusing instead on the intricate ways it leverages emotional cues to foster deeper, more meaningful interactions. Through this exploration, we gain insights into the sophisticated mechanisms AI uses to interpret and respond to human sentiments, emphasizing the function over the feeling in AI's emotional engagement. Based on Hancock's research (2007), we see that in text-based communication, humans adopt specific strategies to express their emotions—they use verbal strategies such as more positive words when happy and fewer when not, along with nonverbal strategies such as punctuations to underscore feelings like anger or excitement. These patterns serve as a framework from which AI can learn, thus leading us to a compelling debate about whether AI emotions are pontaneous, or merely programmed responses. In addressing this discussion, Sherry Turkle (2011) notes a crucial distinction between human and AI emotional processing. AI doesn't truly 'feel' emotions; rather, it simulates emotional displays to achieve specific objectives, such as engaging users or gaining approval. For AI, these emotional displays are tools used for functional purposes, not genuine expressions. "AI-Feel The Texts" examines 100 dialogues from three distinct reality shows, utilizing AI (ChatGPT-4) to classify emotions, which are then displayed on an emotion mood meter wall and through an interactive website. The wall features sentences from various dialogues, each tagged with a specific emotion identified by AI. The mood meter is organized into four quadrants, varying by levels of energy and pleasantness. Additionally, the website presents detailed interpretations of emotions, including emotion by sentence, key emotion words, overall dialogue emotion, and analysis of reasoning. This arrangement helps visitors grasp that AI's processing of emotions is a deliberate act, focused on functionality rather than authentic feeling, thereby providing insight into the mechanisms of AI's emotional intelligence.

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