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Is "Super-AI-Freud" on the Way?

How Far Should Machines with AI Be Allowed to Go?

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Can Body Language Lead to Super-Emotional Intelligence?

The fact that a person’s ear muscles spontaneously and unconsciously reveal their emotions leads Strauss directly to the AI debate: “So far, this debate has revolved exclusively around the topic of ‘superintelligence’—that is, the question of how much smarter than us the machine will become.” In contrast, a new term could now be introduced: “super-emotional intelligence.” This would refer to a machine capable of interpreting emotions better than any human—including through body signals that we don’t even perceive in others. The scientist makes it clear right away that this does not refer to a machine that actually feels emotions. Rather, super-emotional intelligence refers to a system that can recognize, understand, and respond to a person’s emotions better than people trained to do so.

Highly Emotional Systems Must Be Designed for People

His Ph.D. student, Sophie Bonnaire, first defined the term “Super-Emotional Intelligence” (SEI) in her perspective article in *Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence*. In it, she describes what “super-emotional intelligence” would need to be capable of. She also explains why today’s AI is still far from achieving this and how clear rules could be used to build a system that works for people rather than against them. Unlike today’s “empathetic” chatbots—which may seem empathetic but do not truly track the state of their interlocutor—super-emotional intelligence must be able to regulate itself. For example, it would choose an appropriate response that is most likely to help the person sitting across from it get where they want to go! And it should be able to learn from the impact of its own responses.

Rules to Prevent Abuse are Necessary Here as Well

But caution is warranted, as the researchers from Saarland warn. After all, with a different objective, the same technology could become a “hyper-manipulative machine”! Such a machine could then detect states of mind that we ourselves are completely unaware of. There is a danger that we could be steered toward goals we would never have chosen. The “EU AI Act,” which, as is well known, prohibits emotion recognition in the workplace and in schools, makes this ethical question even more pressing. The research group therefore argues, for example, that humans should set the goals and determine what such a machine is permitted to do! As they go on to explain, the focus is on care rather than control.

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