’Empathetic computers can bring people closer’

If a computer learns to better understand human emotions, it could in turn teach humans to be more empathetic and mindful of 'the other'. An end to loneliness, exclusion and other such woes? In his inaugural lecture , Professor Egon van den Broek outlined a future in which 'sensitive machines' bring humans closer together. A yellowing newspaper article on his wall delineates the possibilities of affective computing : intelligent devices such as smartphones and smart watches capable of measuring human bio signals such as heart rate, fluctuating body temperature and sweat levels, and subsequently able to infer how a person is feeling. 'Fancy a pint' Your friends already know,' reads the headline of the interview with scientist Egon van den Broek, then working at TNO (the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research) and the University of Twente. The article dates back to 2013. In it, Van den Broek said he expected it to "take another decade or so" before computers capable of recognising human emotions would be available for the consumer market. Have we reached that point yet? "No," concludes the professor of Data-Driven Interaction when we speak a few weeks after his inaugural lecture.