“Emotions are a fundamental part of the human experience. They influence our ability to learn, make decisions, and can affect our overall well-being. But for the longest time, they were neglected in the development of technology because emotions seemed difficult to quantify, and the technology to read emotions did not really exist. But with advances in affective computing, machine learning, and artificial intelligence, we have reached a stage where machines are able to do what was only thought possible by humans – and that is to read the emotional state of a person.”

As emotional AI emerges, we need to examine how countries and businesses creating and deploying this technology can mutually learn ethical best practices. Japan and UK are advanced nations in AI, but differ in social, political, and normative histories, therefore there are many UK-Japan cross-cultural contextual issues to examine. Our comparative focus also enables both parties to reframe the global dominance of Western academic literature on surveillance; privacy; freedom vs. security; corporations’ role in society; disinformation and digital manipulation of citizens; governance; and emotional AI in society. We will provide citizen-led, multi-sectoral, anticipatory, and interdisciplinary responses and feed these into policymaking.