Meeting Reports: ACII 2022

This past October, over 200 researchers gathered in Nara, Japan and virtually to celebrate the latest findings in affective computing. Following years of remote meetings, ACII 2022’s theme of “affective computing for mental and physical well-being” was a timely response to the effects of a global pandemic. Workshops and paper talks delivered updates across physiological signal processing, virtual agents, and expression recognition using a range of modalities, while keynote talks illustrated how the integration of psychology and physiology, computing, and human-centered design has shaped research in well-being. This year’s ACII successfully brought together research across disciplines toward advancing the state of the art in affective computing. All of this was done with the generous support of ACII’s technical sponsor, IEEE Computer Society, the Gold Sponsor, the Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute, the Silver Sponsors, ETS, Disney Research, and Apple, and Bronze Sponsors Openstream.ai, audEERING, and Sony.

Ethics at the forefront

With AAAC’s Ethics Special Interest Group, the 2019 town hall on ethics, and 2021 theme of “Ethical Affective Computing”, ACII has long demonstrated ethics as a core value. This year’s authors discussed the ethical impact of their research both as a required section in submissions and as a central theme in presented work. Bias, privacy and confidentiality, and potential adversarial uses of technology emerged as key topics throughout the conference.

Read the Meeting Report