The Engineer Using A.I. to Read Your Feelings
Rosalind Picard wants to build technology that understands human emotion
Rosalind Picard is an electrical engineer on a mission to engineer emotion into artificial intelligence. In the world of experts who speak in zeros and ones, Picard is schooled in the language of affective computing, which focuses on the importance of encoding emotional intelligence into our digital devices. She wants technology to recognize subtle changes in our mood and adjust what it does accordingly. Artificial intelligence, she says, should respect human emotions.
A tenured professor at MIT’s Media Lab, where she directs the Affective Computing Research Group, Picard likes to cite the provocation of Microsoft Word’s Clippy, the anthropomorphic paper clip that used to pop up on the screen with the message, “It looks like you’re writing a letter.” Clippy was meant to be helpful, but users were irritated by the smiling and winking paper clip bouncing across their monitor. “If that were a person, you would probably not invite them back to your office,” Picard says.
Picard’s work has led to new tools that sense changes in the body — namely, sweat and accompanying shifts in how our skin conducts electricity — that stem from changes in the brain. After an early start creating tools to help people…
