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Emotion, Space and Society 5 (2012) 284

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Emotion, Space and Society

journal homepage: www.elsevier .com/locate/emospa

Book review

Affect and Artificial Intelligence, Elizabeth A. Wilson. Universityof Washington Press, Seattle and London (2010)., 182pp. $25ISBN: 978-0-295-99047-7

Women are ruled by emotions, therefore irrational. Men are incontrol of their emotions, therefore rational. Perhaps it was weari-ness at the persistence of this incarnation of the modernist splitbetween mind and body, and rationality and affect, which was atthe root of the newest book by the feminist scholar and a professorin the Department of Women’s studies at Emory University, Eliza-beth A. Wilson. In her ‘Affect and Artificial Intelligence’, Wilsonchallenges the intelligence/emotion opposition in a novel way,taking as her object of study the ultimate non-emotional, disem-bodied mind, a computer, or rather, an artificial intelligence. Inher subversive reading of psycho-biographical and archival data,Wilson argues that emotions are not only central to the emergenceof ‘thinking computers’, but that emotional capacity can be a keyelement of machine intelligence.

The argument of Wilson’s book is two-fold. Firstly, she is inter-ested in charting the emotional landscapes of human involvementwith the machine in the context of artificial intelligence research.Using psycho-biographical data on two prominent researchers inthe area of cybernetics, Alan Turing and Walter Pipps, Wilsonexamines questions of humour, sociality and sexuality and theirimportance to the work of these two key figures. The explorationof the ‘affective networks’ linking computers and humans takesan interesting turn in chapter three, where Wilson describes deepemotional engagements employees of the Massachusetts Instituteof Technology developed with a computer programme calledELIZA, which simulated a psychoanalyst–patient interaction. Inthis chapter, as well as elsewhere in the book, Wilson argues notonly that humans can have feelings for machines, but indeed thatemotional relationality is crucial for the existence of thinkingmachines.

Wilson’s second argument challenges the modernist separationbetween mind and body, and intellect and emotion, in suggestingthat affects are central to the development of intelligence. At theheart of the book is a binary between two models of machine intel-ligence: chess-playing, that is disembodied and abstract, and child-like, that is embodied and relational. This presumed antagonismbetween child-like and chess-like models of intelligence is chal-lenged in chapter one, where Wilson narrates the fascinatingencounter between two formidable chess-players, Anatoly Kas-parov and IBM’s Deep Blue computer. Her analysis suggests thatchess-playing intelligence is not rooted in abstract rationality, butis instead imbricated in networks of affectivity.Wilson draws atten-tion to the embodied and affective dimensions of Kasparov’ssupreme intellectual capacity, and goes as far as to suggest that itwas the affective de-tachment caused by playing a computer whichcontributed to Kasparov’s defeat.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.emospa.2012.05.002

For me, perhaps the most important argument of the book wasthe constructed nature of emotion-less impassivity we associatewith artificial intelligence. Wilson argues that the dominance ofthe cognitive-abstract model of intelligence in AI research is aneffect of our own reluctance to admit emotion as an element ofintelligent machine-life. This thesis is mostly explored in chaptertwo, where Wilson engages with Silvan Tomkin’s affect theory toanalyse the history and development of Kismet, a supposedly‘emotional’ robot being researched at the Massachusetts Instituteof Technology. While the original aim of the project was to createa sociable, child-like, learning robot, the actual design, Wilsonnotes, inhibited the emergence of a truly child-like creature,capable of error and of shame. As in the case of Turing’s affectiverobot designs, so in the case of Kismet the project is ‘drawn toemotion, but then loses its nerve’. Wilson concludes that ‘whilethe idea of a child-computer is an excellent one (.) [t]here isperhaps little appetite for a device that would be wayward anderror-prone, a device in which affect would not only generate intel-ligence but also necessarily lead to tantrums and tears. Can anunreasonable device compute?’ (p.56, second emphasis mine). Inother words, can we accept the idea that emotional reactivity andintelligent ability are not antagonistic? Can we move beyond thedisaffected rationality as an ideal of intelligence? Wilson’s bookoffers some hope, but also stresses that the biggest difficulty increating intelligent, human-like machines lies in our own reluc-tance to admit that affectivity is a key part of intelligent humanity.

The book is utterly original, and thought-provoking. One short-coming is the lack of conclusion. The story ends abruptly, leavingthe reader with no opportunity to gather the various themes ofthe book together and reflect on the inter-connectedness of theemotional and intellectual worlds of AI, and on their importanceto the future of human–machine relations. Wilson herself is quickto admit potential shortcomings of her methodology, and her Intro-duction may sound a bit apologetic, but it is mainly an invitation tohospitality and interest rather than an easy disregard for the some-times ‘weak and muted’ traces of affective attachments in thehistory and present of AI research. Considering thatWilson convinc-ingly shows that discounting of affect is endemic to AI research, it isperhaps necessary to take an empathetic position in order to teaseout the silenced dimension of AI. All in all an excellent, fascinatingread, engagingly written and very relevant to a number of theoret-ical and empirical debates in social science and cybernetics alike.

Anna KrzywoszynskaHuman Geography, Durham University, South Road,

Durham DH1 3LE, United KingdomE-mail address: ggp07adk@shef.ac.uk

11 May 2012