Citizen AI Brings Machine Emotion to a Public Table

Artificial intelligence can imitate emotional expression before society agrees on what that performance means. Citizen AI - AI Cafe brings that tension into a public conversation where enthusiasm, skepticism and basic curiosity are all welcome.

The Trust Collaboratory at Columbia University will present the session on November 3, 2026, from 8 to 9:30 p.m. EST at Qahwah House on Broadway. Cristian Capotescu is listed as host. Participation is free, and registration remains open on the official event page.

An artwork becomes a long-running technology record

Interdisciplinary artist Debra Swack will guide the evening's conversation. Her work has followed questions about artificial emotion through an evolving art project developed across roughly two decades and successive generations of technology. That history gives the room more than a demonstration of the newest model. It offers a way to examine how the language and performance of machine emotion have changed as the systems themselves became more capable.

The discussion will focus on identity, trust and bias. Those questions move beyond whether a system can produce an emotionally legible response. They reach the relationship forming around that response, including what a person may disclose, believe or delegate when a machine appears to understand how they feel.

Responsible AI begins before consensus

Citizen AI is an NSF-funded project bringing academics, artists, technologists, teachers, small-business owners, community organizers and professionals into the same responsible-AI conversation. The AI Cafe format leaves room for participants to bring their own questions and for the public to challenge the assumptions surrounding automated systems before those assumptions harden into products and policy.

Qahwah House is at 2869 Broadway, New York, NY 10025. Register through the official Citizen AI event page and confirm availability before attending.