The Next Big Breakthrough: Emotional A.I. With every New Year comes a vast array of technological advancements. Whether it’s advances in social media, mobile technology, or how organizations interpret large sets of data, technology continues to evolve and adapt to our every day lives. These innovations have allowed us to perform simple tasks that were originally seen as impossible. We went from mailing letters to having the ability to live video chat from across the globe via the Internet. Cars, such as Ford’s Escape, are parallel parking themselves. Advancements in technology seem limitless, that is until you ask ‘Siri’, Apple’s personal assistant software, a question and what you hear in return is an unemotional robotic voice. Where’s the feeling of remorse from Siri when she tells you your favorite sports team lost? To gain a competitive edge in the market, organizations must focus on adding that “personal touch” in their products or services. Paige Baltzan in our book, Business Driven Information Systems, uses the term Web 3.0 to define “the next generation of business opportunities” (114). “Web 3.0 is intellectual based applications using natural language processing and machine-based learning and reasoning” (Baltzan 114). Consumers will be able to describe information in such a way that computers will be able to understand the relationships between topics. By strengthening the relationship between people, machines, and information, businesses are able to become more efficient and effective.
Although Web 3.0’s definition is strictly Internet based, the concept is incorporated into many different technological fields. For example, in referring to using a natural voice, “Apple’s Siri has already made substantial leaps in answering mundane questions since her debut in October of 2011” (Griggs). Rather than answer whether or not your favorite sports team lost with ‘Would you like to Web search…’, she now answers with ‘St. Louis Cardinals was defeated today by the Chicago Cubs; final score was 4-3’. Mobile and Web based technology is only scratching the surface as to what we are able to accomplish. Consumers will soon be undergoing real life experiences only thought of in sci-fi movies. In the article, “Your Robot Wants A Hug”, author Jon Chase describes the origins of emotional artificial intelligence (EAI) and its progress. Chase begins his timeline dating back to the late 90’s, where the introduction of the first high-tech robots showing promise of EAI came about, Sony’s Aibo and the infamous Furby (58). The original Aibo, was a robotic dog able to understand and adhere to demands such as ‘sit’, or even play with a ball. Furby, was programmed with the ability to learn English words and phrases. Aibo and Furby were essentially pioneers of the EAI movement, and considered to be major breakthroughs into the world of human-robot interaction. Chase next moves on to discuss EAI’s progression just in the past few years, with the example of Microsoft’s Kinect for Xbox, which is a “popular image-capture device composed of a laser range finder with stereoscopic cameras” (Chase 59). Consumers today are playing video games with the movements of their body’s versus a handheld controller. Another example Chase uses is the Swivl, “an interactive motorized