Artificial Empathy Systems and Design Research at Scale

Melbourne was the final stop on this year's Salesforce Basecamp tour, and the final keynote of the event was given by Shaun Paga from Soul Machines, a New Zealand company specialising in building what they call "Artificial Humans". These are digital avatars with very detailed faces that respond to the emotional cues of the person they're talking to. Soul Machines was founded by Dr. Mark Sagar, who started out modelling body parts for medicine, then went into CGI, and has earned himself two Academy Awards for his work on Avatar and King Kong. After leaving the movie industry, Sagar set himself the task of building Artificial Humans, with the aim of radically advancing the interface between humans and computers. We've known for years that babies faces and behaviours have evolved to maximise valuable interactions with adults.