Rana el Kaliouby: When Will Machines Understand Human Emotions

<p>Computers can interpret the text we type, and they’re getting better at understanding the words we speak. But they’re only starting to understanding the emotions we feel—whether that means anger, amusement, boredom, distraction, or anything else. This week Harry talks with Rana El Kaliouby, the CEO of a Boston-based company called Affectiva that’s working to close that gap.</p><p>El Kaliouby and her former MIT colleague Rosalind Picard are the inventors of the field of emotion AI, also called affective computing. The main product at Affectiva, which Picard and El Kaliouby co-founded in 2009, is a media analytics system that uses computer vision and machine learning to help market researchers understand what kinds of emotions people feel when they view ads or entertainment content. But the company is also active in other areas such as safety technology for automobiles that can monitor a driver’s behavior and alert them if they seem distracted or drowsy. </p><p>Ultimately, Kaliouby predicts, emotion AI will become an everyday part of human-machine interfaces. She says we’ll interact with our devices the same way we interact with each other — not just through words, but through our facial expressions and body language. And that could include all the devices that help track our physical health and mental health.</p><p>Rana El Kaliouby grew up in Egypt and Kuwait. She earned a BS and MS in computer science from the American University in Cairo and a PhD in computer science from the University of Cambridge in 2005, and was a postdoc at MIT from 2006 to 2010. In April 2020 she published <i>Girl Decoded</i>, a memoir about her mission to “humanize technology before it dehumanizes us.” She’s been recognized by the Fortune 40 Under 40 list, the Forbes America’s Top 50 Women in Tech list, and the Technology Review TR35 list, and she is a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader. </p><p><strong>Please rate and review MoneyBall Medicine on Apple Podcasts! </strong>Here's how to do that from an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch:<