The Global Forum for Emotional Intelligence: The IAEI Symposium
Each year, the Institute of Artificial Emotional Intelligence hosts its premier event: the International Symposium on Artificial Emotional Intelligence (ISAEI). More than a conventional academic conference, the Symposium is a multi-disciplinary gathering that brings together the world's leading computer scientists, neuroscientists, psychologists, ethicists, artists, policymakers, and industry innovators. The event is meticulously designed to break down silos. Plenary sessions feature paired talks—for example, a neuroscientist presenting new findings on the neural correlates of empathy followed by an AI researcher explaining how those findings inspired a new algorithm. The symposium includes not only paper presentations and poster sessions but also interactive workshops on ethical design, live demonstrations of cutting-edge technology in our labs, artistic installations from our Creative Lab, and public-facing panels that tackle the big societal questions. The atmosphere is one of collaborative exploration, debate, and shared purpose, making it the definitive annual event for anyone serious about the future of emotion and technology.
Rigorous Dissemination: The Journal of Artificial Emotional Intelligence
To ensure the rigorous and archival dissemination of research, the Institute publishes the peer-reviewed 'Journal of Artificial Emotional Intelligence' (JAEI). This open-access journal has a unique scope and review process.
- Interdisciplinary Scope: JAEI publishes original research that bridges technical AI, human sciences, and ethics. A typical issue might contain a paper on a novel transformer architecture for emotion recognition, a psychological study on human perceptions of AI empathy, a philosophical treatise on the moral status of emotional simulations, and a case study on deploying an emotional AI tool in a school district. This encourages readers and authors to think beyond their own disciplines.
- Cascade Review Process: Submitted papers are initially reviewed for technical soundness by AI experts. Papers that pass then undergo a second-stage review by relevant domain experts (e.g., psychologists for a paper on emotion perception models) and finally, an ethics review by our editorial board to evaluate societal implications and ethical rigor. This three-layer process ensures published work is technically innovative, scientifically valid, and ethically considered.
- Special Issues on Pressing Topics: We regularly publish special issues curated by guest editors on frontier topics like 'Cross-Cultural Affective Computing,' 'Emotional AI in Pandemic Response,' or 'The Neuroscience of AI-Evoked Emotion.' These issues become landmark collections that define the state of the art in emerging sub-fields.
Supporting Early-Career Researchers and Global Voices
A core mission of our dissemination efforts is to nurture the next generation and amplify diverse perspectives.
Doctoral Consortium and Awards: The annual Symposium features a pre-event Doctoral Consortium where PhD students present their work to a panel of senior researchers for detailed feedback in a supportive environment. We also award prestigious prizes for the best student paper, the most ethically innovative project, and the best interdisciplinary research, providing recognition and funding to emerging leaders.
Travel Grants and Virtual Access: To ensure global inclusivity, we provide substantial travel grants for researchers from low- and middle-income countries to attend the Symposium. All plenary sessions and selected workshops are live-streamed for free, and recordings are made permanently available, democratizing access to the conversations.
Multilingual Outreach and Summaries: We produce non-technical summaries of key Symposium talks and JAEI articles in multiple languages, distributed through blogs, podcasts, and social media. This makes the complex research accessible to journalists, educators, policymakers, and the interested public, fostering informed societal dialogue.
Blue Sky Workshops and Foresight Reports
Beyond reporting on current work, our dissemination strategy actively shapes the future of the field. We host invitation-only 'Blue Sky Workshops' that bring together a small group of visionaries to brainstorm on long-term, high-risk ideas. The outcomes of these workshops are published as 'Foresight Reports'—provocative, non-consensus documents that map possible futures and identify grand challenge problems for the community to tackle. These reports often seed new research directions and policy discussions.
Through our Symposium, Journal, and supporting activities, the Institute of Artificial Emotional Intelligence acts as the central nervous system for a global community. We don't just share information; we curate conversations, set research agendas, celebrate responsible innovation, and build the shared vocabulary and trust necessary for a field that is as much about understanding the human heart as it is about advancing silicon-based intelligence. In sharing our work with the world, we invite the world to join us in the careful, wondrous task of teaching machines to feel with us.