Human opacity is the intrinsic quality of unknowability of human beings with respect to machines. The descriptive relationship between humans and machines, which captures how much information one can gather about the other, can be explicated using an opacity-transparency relationship. This relationship allows us to describe and normatively evaluate a spectrum of opacity where humans and machines may be either opaque or transparent. In this paper, we argue that the advent of Affective Computing (AC) has begun to shift the ideal position of humans on this spectrum towards greater transparency, while much of this technology is shifting towards opacity. We explore the implications of this shift with regard to the affective information of humans and how the threat to human opacity by AC systems has various adverse repercussions, such as infringement of one's autonomy, deception, manipulation, and increased anxiety. There are also distributive consequences that expose vulnerable groups to unjustified burdens and reduce them to mere profiles. We further provide an assessment of current AC technology, which follows the descriptive relationship between humans and machines from the lens of opacity and transparency. Finally, we foresee and address three possible objections to our claims. These are the beneficence of AC systems, their relation to privacy, and their restrictive capacity to capture human affects. Through these arguments, the paper aims to bring attention to the ontological relationship between humans and machines from the perspective of opacity and transparency while emphasizing on the gravity of the ethical concerns raised by their threat to human opacity.

中文翻译：

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情感计算的不透明性、透明度和伦理

人类的不透明性是人类对于机器的不可知性的内在品质。人类和机器之间的描述性关系捕获了一个人可以收集多少关于另一个人的信息，可以使用不透明-透明关系来解释。这种关系使我们能够描述和规范地评估一系列不透明性，其中人类和机器可能是不透明的或透明的。在本文中，我们认为情感计算（AC）的出现已经开始将人类在这一领域的理想位置转向更大的透明度，而这项技术的大部分正在转向不透明。我们探讨了这种转变对人类情感信息的影响，以及 AC 系统对人类不透明性的威胁如何产生各种不利影响，例如侵犯一个人的自主权、欺骗、操纵和增加焦虑。还有分配性后果，使弱势群体承受不合理的负担，并使他们沦为普通人。我们进一步对当前的交流技术进行了评估，该技术从不透明和透明的角度来描述人与机器之间的关系。最后，我们预见并解决了对我们的主张的三种可能的反对意见。这些是空调系统的好处、它们与隐私的关系以及它们捕捉人类影响的限制能力。通过这些论点，本文旨在从不透明和透明的角度引起人们对人与机器之间本体论关系的关注，同时强调它们对人类不透明性的威胁所引发的伦理问题的严重性。