Companies like Affectiva have explored artificial emotional intelligence, or the science of getting computers to understand facial expressions and social cues from humans, so that machines can better suit our needs.

A team at Google is using everyday humans to shape the decisions that machines make, no coding required. Researchers built a web app that showed people Google's previously reported AI-generated drawings of things like cats and rhinos, and recorded their reactions through a webcam. When people smiled after seeing the doodle, it registered as a positive signal. When they frowned or looked confused, it registered as a negative reaction. After gathering all the drawings that people reacted positively to, the Googlers retrained the AI system with a focus on the "good" examples. The results were better drawings of cats and dogs.