Hello Creators of Tomorrow!
Have you ever asked Alexa a question and thought, “Whoa… she sounds happy today!” Or maybe you’ve chatted with an AI like ChatGPT and wondered if it was annoyed, excited, or even bored? In this week’s episode of AI and the Kid, Alex and Emily explored one BIG question: Can AI feel emotions? (Spoiler alert: not really!)
Listen to the Podcast!
Find AI and the Kid wherever you listen to podcasts.
🔍 What We Explore in This Episode
Why AI doesn’t actually feel emotions—but can fake it
How AI can sound happy, sad, or calm even though it doesn’t really feel anything
What Affective Computing is and why it matters
How humans really feel emotions and what can trigger them
What happens when AI tries to “read” your feelings from your voice!
🎙️ Can AI Really Understand How You Feel?
In this episode, we talked about a super cool tool called Hume AI—and yes, it’s a real AI that can guess what emotions you're feeling just by listening to your voice! 😲
Hume AI is a special kind of artificial intelligence built to listen like a human. It doesn’t just hear your words—it listens to how you say them. It pays attention to things like:
🎵 Pitch – Is your voice high or low?
🕐 Timing – Are you talking fast or slow?
📣 Tone – Do you sound excited, bored, nervous, or happy?
Then it takes all that information and tries to figure out what emotion you're expressing—kind of like a digital emotion detective!
We tested it before recording this episode, and it was pretty amazing. Even when we tried faking emotions, Hume AI could often tell that we weren’t being totally real. It’s like it has a sixth sense for feelings—but it’s still just a tool, not a mind.
Want to try it out? You can explore it (with a grown-up’s help) and see what your voice says about your mood. Just remember: AI doesn’t actually feel anything—it just analyzes patterns. But tools like Hume AI show how technology is learning to connect with us in new and thoughtful ways.
🧪 Beyond the Podcast: Try This at Home!
Want to explore how AI mimics emotions and how we experience feelings in real life? Try these fun activities that help you think like a robot—and feel like a human!
🎭 Emotion Voice Challenge
AI listens to how we speak to figure out how we feel—can your friends do the same? Try this fun acting activity to test your emotion-detecting skills!
What you need:
A sentence to say (try: “I’m going to the park!” or “I love pizza!”)
A friend or family member
What to do:
Say your sentence three different ways—happy, sad, and angry.
Have someone guess which emotion you were pretending to feel.
Switch roles and see how well you can guess their emotions!
Try adding silly or hard emotions like “excited,” “bored,” or “nervous.”
This is similar to how tools like Hume AI learn to recognize emotions using tone, speed, and rhythm of your voice!
🧸 Robot Roleplay
AI can act like it has feelings—but it doesn’t actually feel them. Try this activity to see what that looks like!
What you need:
A stuffed animal, robot toy, or even a drawing
Your imagination!
What to do:
Pretend your toy is an AI robot that can talk.
Give it different “emotional responses” (a happy voice, a sleepy voice, a frustrated voice).
Ask questions like, “How are you today?” and make it answer using only tone and voice.
Then ask yourself—did it sound real? Could you tell it wasn’t really feeling anything?
This helps you understand the difference between simulated emotion and real human feelings.
🕵️ Emotion Detective Game
Emotions don’t just come from our voices—they come from inside our brains, too! Try being an emotion detective and track what makes you and others feel a certain way.
What you need:
A notebook or journal
Colored pencils or markers
What to do:
Write down five things that made you feel something today (a song, a snack, a smile, a game, etc.).
Next to each one, draw a small face showing the emotion (happy, sad, excited, confused).
Ask a family member to do the same and compare your lists.
Talk about what triggers your feelings and how you each react.
This helps you build your emotional intelligence—something even AI can’t fully understand yet!
🤖 Explore More with Gear
Want to discuss the episode more? Try out our custom chatbot, Gear. Gear can answer all your questions or help you explore the topics from this episode more.
💌 Be Part of the Podcast!
Want to share how YOU feel about AI? Got a question about emotions or robots?
Send me an email at aikidmedia@gmail.com—I’d love to hear from you!
🌟 Be creative, learn, and keep discovering—because you are the creators of tomorrow!
This newsletter was written in collaboration with AI. The main image was created in Canva by a human.