Investigator: Desmond Ong.
When we think of AI today, we might think of them as cold and “robotic”, and might not be able to imagine them being empathetic, understanding, and more generally, “human-like”. But we are working on changing that, building AI models that can understand human emotions, intentions, and other mental states, by leveraging the latest technologies in probabilistic modelling, deep learning, and deep probabilistic programming, while remaining firmly grounded in psychological science. Our work has important implications for designing social robots, chatbots, and AI that interact with us in our daily lives and which could eventually have a positive impact on our emotional health and well-being.