Bridging the objective and the subjective for a democratic future

For decades, artificial intelligence (AI) has been developed with intelligent search techniques and powerful learning agents to adapt to competitive settings. This condition leads to the notion of robust AI, which applies its data-driven knowledge to a wide range of problems systematically and reliably, synthesizing them from a variety of sources, where it can reason flexibly and dynamically about the world, transfer what it learns from one context to another, and finally build some semblance of trust. In conjunction with the AI research, entertainment science (ES) had gained momentum where aggregate value functions, enhanced affordance, improvised utility, and diverse reward systems were designed to make the process entertaining (i.e., gamification), subjective outcome measurable (i.e., engaging, fun, etc.), and quantifiable affective characteristic (i.e., exciting, motivating, etc.). Bridging AI and ES applied in a game environment provided the platform to benefit both sides as a new form of scientific venture while establishing common interests to understand better how those fields interact in popular media and other real-life problems.
Such research has undergone concerted efforts that brought together fields such as game informatics, human-like AI, human-computer interactions, entertainment computing, game analytics, AI search, information system, and the like. As digital games have explored human-driven phenomena, AI agents that are emotionally sentient would enable complex tasks to be performed more effectively, make better decisions, and offer more practical and effective services. In the aftermath of COVID-19, the need to intertwine AI and ES was becoming more critical, especially in learning, services, safety, workforce, robotics, supply chain, manufacturing, etc. Overhaul in interaction design, physical and virtual stimuli, relative to co-creation and collaboration between human and machine could be observed and significantly impacted. This research center acts as a platform for multi-disciplinary research efforts that disseminate and produce new knowledge and service development by capitalizing on games as the basis of a dynamic testing environment; therefore, solving real-world problems step by step.