What would an effort to create digital machines capable of understanding humans and engaging with us in a positive manner look like? First it would not be called AI. We have been trying the term Digital Humanity out for size. While advanced machines may well decide there is a better word than digital to summarize their contribution, we use it to denote algorithmic solutions. We use the word humanity not in the context of the phrase Digital Humanities where it refers to the scholastic discipline covering western knowledge but rather as a catchall for all that defines our humanness, the psychological/emotional, physical and mental/cognitive and sure let’s go out on a limb and include spiritual.
While the scope of DH is so daunting it may be paralyzing, the goal of DH, of understanding and promoting humanity is, in our experience, amazingly doable. Beginning with basic psychometric and psychological knowledge, at psyML we have in under two years on a bootstrap budget, developed deep learning systems that can accurately measure both personality and emotions from social text and are developing our own system to measure these two core aspects of our humanity from image preference.