By day I am Professor of Technology & Society for Bangor University (Wales, UK). I have broad research interests, but I gravitate to the topic of how technologies are used to engage with intimate dimensions of human life. Unwittingly this has become a recurrent theme (and sometimes lodestar) in both my social science and philosophical writing. 

 

Increasingly my work, and that I lead, involves study of how AI is used to interact with people, although I'm probably best known for my work on governance and ethical questions around profiling of human emotion through AI. While I'm often critical, I am positive and constructive. Pointing out harms and bad things is the easier part of the job; envisioning and creating good in complex environments is more challenging (and often more interesting).

 

Much of my work takes place through the Emotional AI Lab that I direct. Together with colleagues from across the UK, Japan and the US, we use diverse methods and approaches. These derive from media and communications studies, sociology, criminology, critical theory and law, using quantitative and qualitative means to understand the social impact AI technologies that function in relation to data about human emotion, moods, affective states, and other intimate dimensions of human life.

 

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