Synthia’s Social-Psychology Module

In Android Chronicles: Reborn, Synthia is an android with a social-psychology module that helps her evaluate human language, behavior, and facial expressions to infer what the people she interacts with are feeling and their emotional response to her. This aids in presenting herself as human by modeling people’s behavior and pointing out when she’s acting inappropriately, while suggesting better responses. It also becomes a key to her survival in helping to determine who might be a friend or a threat and keeping her from offending people.

Associated with this module is her sensory ability to measure human biometrics such as heart beat and the release of pheromones and other chemicals. Altogether, it gives her an uncanny ability to read people. Machten gives Synthia this ability in order for her to help him in social situation, since he doesn’t work well with people. Also, he wants her to use this skill to keep him out of trouble with his illegal activities.

Such programming would require the collection of enough visual, sound, and scent information along with enough background in human interactions to come to a valid conclusion about what a human was experiencing and what response might be appropriate in the circumstances.