Rosalind Picard is a professor at MIT, director of the Affective Computing Research Group at the MIT Media Lab, and co-founder of two companies, Affectiva and Empatica. Over two decades ago she launched the field of affective computing with her book of the same name. This book described the importance of emotion in artificial and natural intelligence, the vital role emotion communication has to relationships between people in general and in human-robot interaction. I really enjoyed talking with Roz over so many topics including emotion, ethics, privacy, wearable computing, her recent work in epilepsy, and even love and meaning.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kq0VO1FqE6I

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Outline:

0:00 – Introduction

1:00 – Affective computing

2:45 – Clippy

5:03 – Diversity in computer science

5:55 – Emotion in AI

8:40 – Privacy

18:10 – Forming a connection with AI systems

30:31 – Emotion

39:05 – Measuring signals from the brain and the body

50:20 – Future AI systems

53:50 – Faith and science

56:35 – Meaning of life