Rosalind Picard: Affective Computing, Emotion, Privacy, and Health

Lex introduces Rosalind Picard, an MIT professor, director of the Affective Computing Research Group at the MIT Media Lab, and cofounder of Affectiva and Empatica. Over two decades ago she launched affective computing with her same-named book on the importance of emotion in artificial and natural intelligence and in human relationships and human-robot interaction. He previews topics from emotion and ethics to privacy, wearables, her epilepsy research, and even love and meaning.

Asked how her understanding of affective computing changed over 24 years, Picard explains the original term was broader than recognizing and responding to emotion—the two pieces worked on hardest—also encompassing machines with internal mechanisms that function like human emotion: any computing that relates to, arises from, or deliberately influences human emotion.

Picard recalls the human-computer interaction people see: scowling and cursing at a computer while Clippy keeps smiling, winking, and dancing, which only deepens frustration. Clippy had sophisticated AI for its day but was emotionally unintelligent—like a puppy that, instead of flattening its ears when yelled at, smiled and danced. Bill Gates got a standing ovation announcing its demise because people were so annoyed.

Clippy was intelligent about what help a letter needed but oblivious to not smiling while you annoy your customer—a mismatch developers didn't consider. Intelligence then meant math, language, chess, and well-defined games, whereas social-emotional interaction is far more complex and required skills many computer scientists personally lacked.

Lex notes a lingering lack of empathy among computer scientists. Picard counters that computer scientists are a far more diverse group than 25 years ago—which is good, since computer science should reflect society's needs, and brilliance exists in every personality type, not just those who prefer computers to people.