Nonverbal Cues in the 21st Century

The more impersonal communication gets, the more we remember the need for personal contact. While technology has many great features, it can often distill communication down to text messages, emails, or instant messages. These really can help manage spread out workforces or enable people to work from home, but they also prevent us from reading…

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Emotion in an Artificial Intelligence World

It is an almost omnipresent fear these days that technology is degrading human connections, but could we leverage that same technology to foster closer emotional ties? We already have enough trouble reading each other’s emotions, and this becomes even harder when we communicate over long-distances, whether through email, phone calls, or even video chat. We…

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Can We Learn Empathy from Robots?

Many people familiar with science fiction tend to have an ingrained fear and repulsion at what are seen as cold and unfeeling robots. The idea of widespread artificial intelligence brings to mind terrifying visions from films such as The Terminator or The Matrix, both of which present an apocalyptic future where artificial intelligence turns on…

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The Problem of Lie Detection

Somewhat unsurprisingly, the movies have painted a highly inaccurate picture of the power of polygraphs, or so-called lie-detector tests. While many crime dramas showcase a seemingly miraculous technology for distinguishing truths from lies, this portrayal, itself, is far from true. However, a new study published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry suggests that polygraph tests…

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