Author: TheConversation

By Nazanin Andalibi, Assistant Professor of Information, University of Michigan Emotion artificial intelligence uses biological signals such as vocal tone, facial expressions and data from wearable devices as well as text and how people use their computers, promising to detect and predict how someone is feeling. It is used in contexts both mundane, like entertainment, and high stakes, like the workplace, hiring and health care. A wide range of industries already use emotion AI, including call centers, finance, banking, nursing and caregiving. More than 50% of large employers in the U.S. use emotion AI aiming to infer employees’ internal...

By Casey Fiesler, Associate Professor of Information Science, University of Colorado Boulder A parent asked a question in a private Facebook group in April 2024: Does anyone with a child who is both gifted and disabled have any experience with New York City public schools? The parent received a seemingly helpful answer that laid out some characteristics of a specific school, beginning with the context that “I have a child who is also 2e,” meaning twice exceptional. On a Facebook group for swapping unwanted items near Boston, a user looking for specific items received an offer of a “gently...

By Thomas Coens, Research Associate Professor of History, University of Tennessee From the time of the founding era to the present day, one of the more common things said about American democracy is that it is an “experiment.” Most people can readily intuit what the term is meant to convey, but it is still a phrase that is bandied about more often than it is explained or analyzed. Is American democracy an “experiment” in the bubbling-beakers-in-a-laboratory sense of the word? If so, what is the experiment attempting to prove, and how will we know if and when it has...

By Nick Butler, Associate Professor, Stockholm University Fox News anchor Sean Hannity interviewed Donald Trump in front of a studio audience in Iowa in December 2023. Hannity asked Trump to guarantee he would not abuse his power or seek retribution if he was reelected in 2024. Trump nodded and replied: “Except for day one.” The audience laughed at Trump’s answer. Trump is obviously joking. The image of being a dictator for a single day is absurd – after all, a despot tends to rule for a lifetime. But evidence suggests that Trump may, in fact, abuse power and seek...

By David Cason, Associate Professor in Honors, University of North Dakota In January 1967, after a gubernatorial election that saw neither candidate gain enough votes to win, the Georgia Legislature was faced with a vital decision: the selection of the state’s 75th governor during the height of the Civil Rights Movement. Legislators chose the candidate who earned the least number of votes and was an ardent segregationist – Democrat Lester Maddox, owner of a chicken restaurant and a perennial candidate. That transformation of Maddox from racist, eccentric business owner to governor was a historical note amid a backdrop of...

By Matthew Wilson, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of South Carolina Americans, it seems, can both value the idea of democracy and not support it in practice. Since 2016, academics and journalists have expressed concerns that formerly secure democracies are becoming less democratic. Different measures of democracy, such as scores produced by the Economist Intelligence Unit, Freedom House and the Varieties of Democracy Institute, have suggested as much based on data over the past decade. The surveys have sounded alarms about the future of democratic governance in places such as the U.S., which the International Institute for Democracy...