CS Seminar: Nazanin Andalibi

Description

Nazanin Andalibi, an assistant professor of information in the School of Information at the University of Michigan, will give a talk titled "Emotion AI in the Future of Work" for the Department of Computer Science. Refreshments will be served after the seminar at 11:45 a.m.

Abstract:

Emotion artificial intelligence (AI), increasingly used in mundane (e.g., entertainment) to high-stakes (e.g., education, health care, workplace) contexts, refers to technologies that claim to algorithmically recognize, detect, predict, and infer emotions, emotional states, moods, and even mental health status using a wide range of input data. While emotion AI is critiqued for associated scientific validity, bias, and surveillance concerns, it continues to be patented, developed, and used without public debate, resistance, or regulation. In this talk, Nazanin Andalibi highlights some of her research group's work focusing on the workplace to discuss: 1) how emotion AI technologies are conceived of by their inventors and what values are embedded in their design, and 2) the perspectives of the humans who produce the data that make emotion AI possible, and whose experiences are shaped by these technologies: data subjects. Andalibi argues that emotion AI is not just technical, it is sociotechnical, political, and enacts/shifts power. She shows how emotion AI could harm the very conditions its advocates promise it will improve (e.g., worker well-being, work conditions), rendering it a problematic choice for addressing structural challenges workers face in the workplace. Andalibi concludes that even with technical reforms (e.g., reducing biases, improving accuracy) many emotion AI-inflicted harms (e.g., emotional labor, privacy harms) would persist.