Kenna Keller: Intermission 4 - Story 4

I think I would like to focus my presentation and final paper on something very integral to my personal paradigm - the development and meaning of emotions.

I am particularly interested in the ways in which humans experience emotion, particularly the words, colors and physical implications we associate with emotions. I practice compassion cultivation, which is a combination of neuroscience and meditation meant to develop ones ability to feel compassion. The idea is that this emotion functions like a muscle and the more we use it the easier it becomes to feel compassion. It is backed by the Stanford School of Medicine as well as the Dalai Lama, and is integral in my relationship with my mother.

Emotion is also a significant theme throughout our reading, one I felt most strongly in the "Mirror Girl" story. The development of Shalice, and her eventual ability to understand and fully integrate into Sami's life, is an arc that can also be seen in the storyteller's relationship with Ibis. This most recent reading ponders the idea of a soul. Can machines have a soul? In which ways is their interpretation of a soul and life in general different than ours? What does it mean to feel compassion as, or for, a non-human object?

This theme is also present in one of the ties I made to the "Mirror Girl" reading, the movie Life-Size. The movie details a doll coming to life, helping a girl deal with the death of her mother, much like the plot line in our reading. It results in the full blown development of feelings in a child's toy, including nostalgia, homesickness and sadness. I would like to find some way to tie this movie to our reading, as well as my own experiences and research regarding emotion in AI (https://machinelearnings.co/the-rise-of-emotionally-intelligent-ai-fb9a814a630e). This could possibly even tie into Tay and her transition to a hateful representation of our society. I am still workshopping the details, but would love to develop a presentation and/or paper on the function of emotion, in humans as well as other beings.

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