Emotional Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence: The Psychology of Coding

Keynote for conference: Drupal Developer Days Athens 2026, Athens

AI Psychosis Pipeline

VIDEO COMING SOON

Drupal’s motto has long been “Come for the code. Stay for the community.“ If our code comes from smart people and our community comes from kind people, we could rephrase our motto as “Come for the intelligence. Stay for the emotions.”

In this time where Artificial Intelligence is dominating discussions in the tech world, it’s important to look at what is motivating us. What are our emotions driving us to do?

And since we are all tremendous nerds, let’s go all the way back… to the evolution of emotions. And then forward to modern advances in brain science.

During the last 80 years, Brain Science, Psychology and Artificial Intelligence have been linked in surprising ways. Understanding how our brains work has revolutionized both AI and psychology.

Let’s take a sweeping look at our emotional intelligence and our artificial intelligence. With a better understanding of those topics, I hope we can improve ourselves… and our code.

Sources

Books recommendations

During my keynote I talked briefly about trauma, healing, autism and how I read a lot. During the Q&A a friend of mine asked for a book recommendation list on those topics. It took me about an hour to go through all the non-fiction books I've read in the past 3 years and make the list, so I'm posting it here for others.

Death and Grief:

  • Being Mortal by Atul Gawande
  • Knocking on Heaven's Door: The Path to a Better Way of Death by Katy Butler

Trauma:

  • What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma by Stephanie Foo
  • Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors: Overcoming Internal Self-Alienation by Janina Fisher

These two are on my TO-READ list, so I haven't read them yet, but they've been highly recommended by others.

  • My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies by Resmaa Menakem
  • Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving: A Guide and Map for Recovering from Childhood Trauma Paperback by Pete Walker

Healing:

  • Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer
  • The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love by Sonya Renee Taylor

Autism:

  • The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism by Naoki Higashida
  • Asperger's Children: The Origins of Autism in Nazi Vienna by Edith Sheffer
  • Self-Care for Autistic People: 100+ Ways to Recharge, De-Stress, and Unmask! by Megan Anna Neff
  • But Everyone Feels This Way: How an Autism Diagnosis Saved My Life by Paige Layle

Also, I can't recommend enough the book I used as a source for several of my slides, A Brief History of Intelligence.

Slides
EI-and-AI.pdf (12.12 MB)
Color theme