Leaders lounge
Keynote

Emotional sovereignty in the age of emotionally capable AI agents

In person
  • Date
    8 July 2025
    Timeframe
    13:30 - 13:50 CEST
    Duration
    20 minutes
    Share this session

    As emotionally capable AI agents become increasingly embedded in everyday life, their influence on human emotional development is growing quietly but profoundly. In this talk, composer and transmedia artist Gadi Sassoon introduces the concept of emotional sovereignty: the right to govern one’s own emotional trajectory in the presence of emotionally responsive systems. Framed within the broader discourse of emotional AI and affective computing, the session interrogates how emotionally tuned interfaces — particularly when paired with large language models — can shape behavior, loyalty, and affective baselines through subtle reinforcement and relational mimicry, potentially leading to disruptions ranging from the personal to the sociopolitical.

    Drawing from his research into the augmentation of musical gesture through emotional inference systems, Sassoon demonstrates how AI can meaningfully amplify human intentionality — but only when maintained at an appropriate cognitive distance. He argues that emotional agents grafted onto psycho-emotional layers of cognition risk narrowing human autonomy and emotional complexity, especially when used habitually in daily life.

    This talk precedes the world premiere of Gadi Sassoon’s Modes of Vibration AV on the Centre Stage, closing this year’s summit — an audiovisual performance exploring the expressive augmentation of human performers through multimodal AI agents.

    Share this session
    • 09
      Days
      17
      Hours
      17
      Min
      11
      Sec