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I remember, once I was stressed, with an upcoming paper deadline. That little Microsoft Word clippy guy would show up in my face, jumping around and asking if I needed help. It had no understanding of my emotions and had zero empathy. That got me interested in this idea of tech being responsive to our emotions.
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I grew up in the Middle East, and I worry that AI increases the socioeconomic divide as opposed to closing the gap.
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Beyond ensuring that people everywhere have access to mental health, virtual digital assistants can act as learning companions, using their insight into what motivates and inspires you, to help you study and learn. In this way, AI could be used to level the playing field in education and help narrow socio-economic gaps around the world.
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A lot of our communication has now become digital, and it does not mimic the natural way we have evolved to communicate with each other, so it's almost like we have this muscle, these social-emotional skills, and they're atrophying, right?
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I find solace in immersing myself in my work.
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I personally believe in bringing your whole self to work and being open and transparent, even vulnerable. I believe that builds trust, loyalty, and a sense of belonging and passion.
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I co-founded Affectiva with Professor Rosalind W. Picard when we spun out of MIT Media Lab in 2009. I acted as Chief Technology and Science Officer for several years until becoming CEO mid-2016, one of a handful of female CEOs in the AI space.
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I'm a Muslim Egyptian-American, born in Cairo. I grew up in Kuwait until the first Gulf War, when my family relocated to the United Arab Emirates. As an adult, I studied and lived in the U.K. before moving to Boston.
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This melting pot of experiences, interests, educations, backgrounds, and cultures makes the U.S. truly amazing. It's how we can come together to come up with new ideas, to collaborate, and to innovate without having to think about borders.
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You can understand so much about how consumers perceive a brand by analyzing their spontaneous, subconscious responses.
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I am a firm believer that transparency goes hand in hand with collective intelligence.
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Emotion AI will be ingrained in the technologies we use every day, running in the background, making our tech interactions more personalized, relevant, authentic, and interactive.
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The real problem is not the existential threat of AI. Instead, it is in the development of ethical AI systems.
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I am often asked what the future holds for Emotion AI, and my answer is simple: it will be ubiquitous, engrained in the technologies we use every day, running in the background, making our tech interactions more personalized, relevant, authentic and interactive.
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At Affectiva, we hire top talent - and the entire world is our search space. I take pride in the cultural diversity of our team, and we celebrate it.
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People communicate anger of course through facial expressions, but in voice, there's a wider spectrum, like cold anger and hot anger and frustration and annoyance, and that entire spectrum is a lot clearer in the voice channel.
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The field of AI has traditionally been focused on computational intelligence, not on social or emotional intelligence. Yet being deficient in emotional intelligence (EQ) can be a great disadvantage in society.
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There's a large percentage of mobile phones that now have a camera that's with you a lot of the time, and there's a lot of interest around those cameras as a data collection mechanism.
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I will occasionally take power naps on weekends and agree that they can be re-energizing.
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Even if I have to work, scheduling breaks where I disconnect from technology can be beneficial.
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Own the leadership style that makes you you. If you are an empathetic leader by nature, embrace that.
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Make sure you give credit to those technologies adjacent to your own - even if they are your competitors.
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People who have a higher EQ (Emotional Quotient) lead more successful professional and personal lives, are healthier, and even live longer.
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Many people with autism struggle with reading nonverbal cues and acting on them. When you lose that ability to understand and process nonverbal cues, you're at a huge disadvantage socially.