WEBVTT 00:00.000 --> 00:02.880 The following is a conversation with Rosalind Picard. 00:02.880 --> 00:04.560 She's a professor at MIT, 00:04.560 --> 00:06.880 director of the Effective Computing Research Group 00:06.880 --> 00:08.360 at the MIT Media Lab, 00:08.360 --> 00:12.440 and cofounder of two companies, Effectiva and Empatica. 00:12.440 --> 00:13.560 Over two decades ago, 00:13.560 --> 00:15.440 she launched a field of effective computing 00:15.440 --> 00:17.560 with her book of the same name. 00:17.560 --> 00:20.040 This book described the importance of emotion 00:20.040 --> 00:23.040 in artificial and natural intelligence. 00:23.040 --> 00:25.320 The vital role of emotional communication 00:25.320 --> 00:28.520 has to the relationship between people in general 00:28.520 --> 00:30.920 and human robot interaction. 00:30.920 --> 00:34.040 I really enjoy talking with Ros over so many topics, 00:34.040 --> 00:36.440 including emotion, ethics, privacy, 00:36.440 --> 00:39.720 wearable computing and her recent research in epilepsy 00:39.720 --> 00:42.600 and even love and meaning. 00:42.600 --> 00:44.000 This conversation is part 00:44.000 --> 00:46.040 of the Artificial Intelligence Podcast. 00:46.040 --> 00:48.200 If you enjoy it, subscribe on YouTube, 00:48.200 --> 00:50.760 iTunes or simply connect with me on Twitter 00:50.760 --> 00:54.000 at Lex Freedman, spelled F R I D. 00:54.000 --> 00:58.000 And now here's my conversation with Rosalind Picard. 00:59.520 --> 01:00.760 More than 20 years ago, 01:00.760 --> 01:03.360 you've coined the term Effective Computing 01:03.360 --> 01:05.400 and led a lot of research in this area. 01:05.400 --> 01:08.800 Since then, as I understand the goal is to make the machine 01:08.800 --> 01:12.400 detect and interpret the emotional state of a human being 01:12.400 --> 01:14.240 and adopt the behavior of the machine 01:14.240 --> 01:16.160 based on the emotional state. 01:16.160 --> 01:19.680 So how is your understanding of the problems 01:19.680 --> 01:24.680 based defined by effective computing changed in the past 24 years? 01:25.400 --> 01:28.960 So it's the scope, the applications, the challenges, 01:28.960 --> 01:32.160 what's involved, how has that evolved over the years? 01:32.160 --> 01:35.400 Yeah, actually, originally when I defined the term 01:35.400 --> 01:38.080 Effective Computing, it was a bit broader 01:38.080 --> 01:41.320 than just recognizing and responding intelligently 01:41.320 --> 01:44.560 to human emotion, although those are probably the two pieces 01:44.560 --> 01:47.160 that we've worked on the hardest. 01:47.160 --> 01:50.680 The original concept also encompassed machines 01:50.680 --> 01:53.520 that would have mechanisms that functioned 01:53.520 --> 01:55.680 like human emotion does inside them. 01:55.680 --> 01:59.000 It would be any computing that relates to arises from 01:59.000 --> 02:01.600 or deliberately influences human emotion. 02:02.600 --> 02:05.160 So the human computer interaction part 02:05.160 --> 02:07.880 is the part that people tend to see. 02:07.880 --> 02:11.000 Like if I'm really ticked off at my computer 02:11.000 --> 02:13.480 and I'm scowling at it and I'm cursing at it 02:13.480 --> 02:15.720 and it just keeps acting smiling and happy 02:15.720 --> 02:17.480 like that little paperclip used to do, 02:17.480 --> 02:22.160 like dancing, winking, that kind of thing 02:22.160 --> 02:24.640 just makes you even more frustrated. 02:24.640 --> 02:29.080 And I thought that stupid thing needs to see my affect 02:29.080 --> 02:30.600 and if it's gonna be intelligent, 02:30.600 --> 02:33.000 which Microsoft researchers had worked really hard on, 02:33.000 --> 02:35.120 it actually had some of the most sophisticated AI in it 02:35.120 --> 02:37.960 at the time, that thing's gonna actually be smart. 02:37.960 --> 02:41.560 It needs to respond to me and you 02:41.560 --> 02:45.320 and we can send it very different signals. 02:45.320 --> 02:47.160 So by the way, just a quick interruption. 02:47.160 --> 02:52.160 The Clippy, maybe it's in Word 95 and 98, 02:52.360 --> 02:54.360 I don't remember when it was born, 02:54.360 --> 02:58.280 but many people, do you find yourself with that reference 02:58.280 --> 03:00.720 that people recognize what you're talking about still 03:00.720 --> 03:01.640 to this point? 03:01.640 --> 03:05.160 I don't expect the newest students to these days, 03:05.160 --> 03:07.160 but I've mentioned it to a lot of audiences 03:07.160 --> 03:09.200 like how many of you know this Clippy thing 03:09.200 --> 03:11.680 and still the majority of people seem to know it. 03:11.680 --> 03:15.280 So Clippy kind of looks at maybe natural language processing 03:15.280 --> 03:19.200 where you are typing and tries to help you complete, I think. 03:19.200 --> 03:22.440 I don't even remember what Clippy was except annoying. 03:22.440 --> 03:25.760 Yeah, some people actually liked it. 03:25.760 --> 03:27.480 I would hear those stories. 03:27.480 --> 03:28.400 You miss it? 03:28.400 --> 03:31.240 Well, I miss the annoyance. 03:31.240 --> 03:35.680 They felt like there's an element, somebody was there 03:35.680 --> 03:37.560 and we're in it together and they were annoying. 03:37.560 --> 03:40.800 It's like a puppy that just doesn't get it. 03:40.800 --> 03:42.120 They keep stripping up the couch kind of thing. 03:42.120 --> 03:44.920 And in fact, they could have done it smarter like a puppy. 03:44.920 --> 03:47.960 If they had done, like if when you yelled at it 03:47.960 --> 03:50.760 or cursed at it, if it had put its little ears back 03:50.760 --> 03:52.880 and its tail down and shirked off, 03:52.880 --> 03:55.840 probably people would have wanted it back, right? 03:55.840 --> 03:58.560 But instead when you yelled at it, what did it do? 03:58.560 --> 04:01.200 It smiled, it winked, it danced, right? 04:01.200 --> 04:03.160 If somebody comes to my office and I yell at them, 04:03.160 --> 04:04.720 they started smiling, winking and dancing. 04:04.720 --> 04:06.720 I'm like, I never want to see you again. 04:06.720 --> 04:08.480 So Bill Gates got a standing ovation 04:08.480 --> 04:10.080 when he said it was going away 04:10.080 --> 04:12.320 because people were so ticked. 04:12.320 --> 04:14.960 It was so emotionally unintelligent, right? 04:14.960 --> 04:18.080 It was intelligent about whether you were writing a letter 04:18.080 --> 04:20.800 or what kind of help you needed for that context. 04:20.800 --> 04:23.360 It was completely unintelligent about, 04:23.360 --> 04:25.720 hey, if you're annoying your customer, 04:25.720 --> 04:28.320 don't smile in their face when you do it. 04:28.320 --> 04:32.280 So that kind of mismatch was something 04:32.280 --> 04:35.000 the developers just didn't think about. 04:35.000 --> 04:39.440 And intelligence at the time was really all about math 04:39.440 --> 04:44.920 and language and chess and games, 04:44.920 --> 04:47.880 problems that could be pretty well defined. 04:47.880 --> 04:51.440 Social emotional interaction is much more complex than chess 04:51.440 --> 04:55.960 or Go or any of the games that people are trying to solve. 04:55.960 --> 04:58.640 And in order to understand that required skills 04:58.640 --> 05:00.240 that most people in computer science 05:00.240 --> 05:02.520 actually were lacking personally. 05:02.520 --> 05:03.760 Well, let's talk about computer science 05:03.760 --> 05:06.320 if things gotten better since the work, 05:06.320 --> 05:09.480 since the message, since you've really launched a field 05:09.480 --> 05:11.280 with a lot of research work in the space, 05:11.280 --> 05:14.080 I still find as a person like yourself 05:14.080 --> 05:16.640 who's deeply passionate about human beings 05:16.640 --> 05:18.840 and yet in computer science, 05:18.840 --> 05:23.040 there still seems to be a lack of, sorry to say, 05:23.040 --> 05:26.760 empathy in us computer scientists. 05:26.760 --> 05:28.800 Yeah, well, or hasn't gotten better. 05:28.800 --> 05:30.680 Let's just say there's a lot more variety 05:30.680 --> 05:32.320 among computer scientists these days. 05:32.320 --> 05:34.960 Computer scientists are a much more diverse group today 05:34.960 --> 05:37.600 than they were 25 years ago. 05:37.600 --> 05:39.000 And that's good. 05:39.000 --> 05:41.760 We need all kinds of people to become computer scientists 05:41.760 --> 05:45.600 so that computer science reflects more what society needs. 05:45.600 --> 05:49.080 And there's brilliance among every personality type. 05:49.080 --> 05:52.000 So it need not be limited to people 05:52.000 --> 05:54.120 who prefer computers to other people. 05:54.120 --> 05:55.400 How hard do you think it is? 05:55.400 --> 05:58.600 How your view of how difficult it is to recognize emotion 05:58.600 --> 06:03.960 or to create a deeply emotional intelligent interaction 06:03.960 --> 06:07.440 has it gotten easier or harder as you've explored it further? 06:07.440 --> 06:10.040 And how far away are we from cracking this? 06:12.440 --> 06:16.040 If you think of the Turing test solving the intelligence, 06:16.040 --> 06:18.760 looking at the Turing test for emotional intelligence? 06:20.720 --> 06:25.600 I think it is as difficult as I thought it was gonna be. 06:25.600 --> 06:29.280 I think my prediction of its difficulty is spot on. 06:29.280 --> 06:33.160 I think the time estimates are always hard 06:33.160 --> 06:37.360 because they're always a function of society's love 06:37.360 --> 06:39.560 and hate of a particular topic. 06:39.560 --> 06:44.560 If society gets excited and you get thousands 06:44.560 --> 06:49.080 of researchers working on it for a certain application, 06:49.080 --> 06:52.080 that application gets solved really quickly. 06:52.080 --> 06:54.360 The general intelligence, 06:54.360 --> 06:58.200 the computer's complete lack of ability 06:58.200 --> 07:03.200 to have awareness of what it's doing, 07:03.560 --> 07:05.560 the fact that it's not conscious, 07:05.560 --> 07:08.640 the fact that there's no signs of it becoming conscious, 07:08.640 --> 07:11.880 the fact that it doesn't read between the lines, 07:11.880 --> 07:15.080 those kinds of things that we have to teach it explicitly, 07:15.080 --> 07:17.520 what other people pick up implicitly. 07:17.520 --> 07:20.440 We don't see that changing yet. 07:20.440 --> 07:23.600 There aren't breakthroughs yet that lead us to believe 07:23.600 --> 07:25.360 that that's gonna go any faster, 07:25.360 --> 07:28.680 which means that it's still gonna be kind of stuck 07:28.680 --> 07:31.320 with a lot of limitations 07:31.320 --> 07:34.080 where it's probably only gonna do the right thing 07:34.080 --> 07:37.200 in very limited, narrow, prespecified contexts 07:37.200 --> 07:40.960 where we can prescribe pretty much 07:40.960 --> 07:42.880 what's gonna happen there. 07:42.880 --> 07:44.920 So I don't see the, 07:47.000 --> 07:48.040 it's hard to predict the date 07:48.040 --> 07:51.800 because when people don't work on it, it's infinite. 07:51.800 --> 07:55.240 When everybody works on it, you get a nice piece of it 07:55.240 --> 07:58.600 well solved in a short amount of time. 07:58.600 --> 08:01.560 I actually think there's a more important issue right now 08:01.560 --> 08:04.560 than the difficulty of it. 08:04.560 --> 08:07.440 And that's causing some of us to put the brakes on a little bit. 08:07.440 --> 08:09.360 Usually we're all just like step on the gas, 08:09.360 --> 08:11.160 let's go faster. 08:11.160 --> 08:14.200 This is causing us to pull back and put the brakes on. 08:14.200 --> 08:18.680 And that's the way that some of this technology 08:18.680 --> 08:21.200 is being used in places like China right now. 08:21.200 --> 08:24.520 And that worries me so deeply 08:24.520 --> 08:27.800 that it's causing me to pull back myself 08:27.800 --> 08:30.080 on a lot of the things that we could be doing 08:30.080 --> 08:33.680 and try to get the community to think a little bit more 08:33.680 --> 08:36.040 about, okay, if we're gonna go forward with that, 08:36.040 --> 08:39.320 how can we do it in a way that puts in place safeguards 08:39.320 --> 08:41.120 that protects people? 08:41.120 --> 08:43.560 So the technology we're referring to is 08:43.560 --> 08:46.400 just when a computer senses the human being, 08:46.400 --> 08:47.720 like the human face. 08:47.720 --> 08:48.560 Yeah, yeah. 08:48.560 --> 08:51.840 And so there's a lot of exciting things there 08:51.840 --> 08:53.960 like forming a deep connection with the human being. 08:53.960 --> 08:55.440 So what are your worries? 08:55.440 --> 08:56.880 How that could go wrong? 08:58.000 --> 08:59.520 Is it in terms of privacy? 08:59.520 --> 09:03.000 Is it in terms of other kinds of more subtle things? 09:03.000 --> 09:04.320 Let's dig into privacy. 09:04.320 --> 09:07.800 So here in the US, if I'm watching a video 09:07.800 --> 09:11.920 of say a political leader and in the US 09:11.920 --> 09:13.640 we're quite free as we all know 09:13.640 --> 09:17.920 to even criticize the president of the United States, right? 09:17.920 --> 09:19.440 Here that's not a shocking thing. 09:19.440 --> 09:22.720 It happens about every five seconds, right? 09:22.720 --> 09:27.720 But in China, what happens if you criticize 09:27.880 --> 09:31.080 the leader of the government, right? 09:31.080 --> 09:34.320 And so people are very careful not to do that. 09:34.320 --> 09:37.880 However, what happens if you're simply watching a video 09:37.880 --> 09:41.000 and you make a facial expression 09:41.000 --> 09:45.280 that shows a little bit of skepticism, right? 09:45.280 --> 09:48.200 Well, and here we're completely free to do that. 09:48.200 --> 09:50.680 In fact, we're free to fly off the handle 09:50.680 --> 09:54.720 and say anything we want, usually. 09:54.720 --> 09:56.560 I mean, there are some restrictions 09:56.560 --> 10:00.840 when the athlete does this as part of the national broadcast 10:00.840 --> 10:03.840 maybe the teams get a little unhappy 10:03.840 --> 10:05.880 about picking that forum to do it, right? 10:05.880 --> 10:08.720 But that's more a question of judgment. 10:08.720 --> 10:12.760 We have these freedoms and in places 10:12.760 --> 10:14.160 that don't have those freedoms, 10:14.160 --> 10:17.080 what if our technology can read 10:17.080 --> 10:19.600 your underlying affective state? 10:19.600 --> 10:22.440 What if our technology can read it even noncontact? 10:22.440 --> 10:24.440 What if our technology can read it 10:24.440 --> 10:28.840 without your prior consent? 10:28.840 --> 10:31.400 And here in the US and my first company, 10:31.400 --> 10:32.960 we started Affectiva. 10:32.960 --> 10:35.600 We have worked super hard to turn away money 10:35.600 --> 10:38.440 and opportunities that try to read people's affect 10:38.440 --> 10:41.360 without their prior informed consent. 10:41.360 --> 10:45.160 And even the software that is licensible, 10:45.160 --> 10:47.680 you have to sign things saying you will only use it 10:47.680 --> 10:51.800 in certain ways, which essentially is get people's buy in, 10:51.800 --> 10:52.640 right? 10:52.640 --> 10:55.400 Don't do this without people agreeing to it. 10:56.840 --> 10:58.640 There are other countries where they're not interested 10:58.640 --> 10:59.560 in people's buy in. 10:59.560 --> 11:01.440 They're just gonna use it. 11:01.440 --> 11:03.080 They're gonna inflict it on you. 11:03.080 --> 11:04.480 And if you don't like it, 11:04.480 --> 11:08.480 you better not scowl in the direction of any sensors. 11:08.480 --> 11:11.440 So one, let me just comment on a small tangent. 11:11.440 --> 11:16.000 Do you know what the idea of adversarial examples 11:16.000 --> 11:20.880 and deep fakes and so on, what you bring up is actually, 11:20.880 --> 11:25.800 in one sense, deep fakes provide a comforting protection 11:25.800 --> 11:30.640 that you can no longer really trust 11:30.640 --> 11:34.560 that the video of your face was legitimate. 11:34.560 --> 11:37.080 And therefore you always have an escape clause 11:37.080 --> 11:38.480 if a government is trying, 11:38.480 --> 11:43.480 if a stable balanced ethical government 11:43.480 --> 11:46.200 is trying to accuse you of something, 11:46.200 --> 11:47.040 at least you have protection. 11:47.040 --> 11:48.720 You can say it was fake news, 11:48.720 --> 11:50.560 as is a popular term now. 11:50.560 --> 11:52.320 Yeah, that's the general thinking of it. 11:52.320 --> 11:54.320 We know how to go into the video 11:54.320 --> 11:58.320 and see, for example, your heart rate and respiration 11:58.320 --> 12:02.160 and whether or not they've been tampered with. 12:02.160 --> 12:05.480 And we also can put fake heart rate and respiration 12:05.480 --> 12:06.320 in your video. 12:06.320 --> 12:09.120 Now too, we decided we needed to do that 12:09.120 --> 12:12.600 after we developed a way to extract it, 12:12.600 --> 12:15.960 but we decided we also needed a way to jam it. 12:15.960 --> 12:18.320 And so the fact that we took time 12:18.320 --> 12:20.920 to do that other step too, 12:20.920 --> 12:22.560 that was time that I wasn't spending 12:22.560 --> 12:25.280 making the machine more effectively intelligent. 12:25.280 --> 12:28.520 And there's a choice in how we spend our time, 12:28.520 --> 12:32.440 which is now being swayed a little bit less by this goal 12:32.440 --> 12:34.360 and a little bit more like by concern 12:34.360 --> 12:36.600 about what's happening in society 12:36.600 --> 12:38.880 and what kind of future do we wanna build. 12:38.880 --> 12:41.680 And as we step back and say, 12:41.680 --> 12:44.600 okay, we don't just build AI to build AI 12:44.600 --> 12:46.520 to make Elon Musk more money 12:46.520 --> 12:48.760 or to make Amazon Jeff Bezos more money. 12:48.760 --> 12:52.920 You could gosh, that's the wrong ethic. 12:52.920 --> 12:54.160 Why are we building it? 12:54.160 --> 12:57.240 What is the point of building AI? 12:57.240 --> 13:01.560 It used to be, it was driven by researchers in academia 13:01.560 --> 13:04.200 to get papers published and to make a career for themselves 13:04.200 --> 13:06.080 and to do something cool, right? 13:06.080 --> 13:07.680 Cause maybe it could be done. 13:07.680 --> 13:12.480 Now we realize that this is enabling rich people 13:12.480 --> 13:14.280 to get vastly richer. 13:15.560 --> 13:19.800 The poor are, the divide is even larger. 13:19.800 --> 13:22.880 And is that the kind of future that we want? 13:22.880 --> 13:25.920 Maybe we wanna think about, maybe we wanna rethink AI. 13:25.920 --> 13:29.120 Maybe we wanna rethink the problems in society 13:29.120 --> 13:32.760 that are causing the greatest inequity 13:32.760 --> 13:35.040 and rethink how to build AI 13:35.040 --> 13:36.760 that's not about a general intelligence, 13:36.760 --> 13:39.320 but that's about extending the intelligence 13:39.320 --> 13:41.240 and capability of the have nots 13:41.240 --> 13:43.800 so that we close these gaps in society. 13:43.800 --> 13:46.640 Do you hope that kind of stepping on the break 13:46.640 --> 13:48.000 happens organically? 13:48.000 --> 13:51.240 Because I think still majority of the force behind AI 13:51.240 --> 13:52.800 is the desire to publish papers, 13:52.800 --> 13:55.800 is to make money without thinking about the why. 13:55.800 --> 13:57.280 Do you hope it happens organically? 13:57.280 --> 13:59.040 Is there a room for regulation? 14:01.120 --> 14:02.960 Yeah, yeah, yeah, great questions. 14:02.960 --> 14:07.360 I prefer the, they talk about the carrot versus the stick. 14:07.360 --> 14:09.160 I definitely prefer the carrot to the stick. 14:09.160 --> 14:14.160 And in our free world, there's only so much stick, right? 14:14.920 --> 14:17.280 You're gonna find a way around it. 14:17.280 --> 14:21.160 I generally think less regulation is better. 14:21.160 --> 14:24.440 That said, even though my position is classically carrot, 14:24.440 --> 14:26.280 no stick, no regulation, 14:26.280 --> 14:29.080 I think we do need some regulations in this space. 14:29.080 --> 14:30.720 I do think we need regulations 14:30.720 --> 14:33.640 around protecting people with their data, 14:33.640 --> 14:38.200 that you own your data, not Amazon, not Google. 14:38.200 --> 14:40.800 I would like to see people own their own data. 14:40.800 --> 14:42.520 I would also like to see the regulations 14:42.520 --> 14:44.520 that we have right now around lie detection 14:44.520 --> 14:48.200 being extended to emotion recognition in general. 14:48.200 --> 14:51.040 That right now you can't use a lie detector on an employee 14:51.040 --> 14:52.760 when you're on a candidate, 14:52.760 --> 14:54.720 when you're interviewing them for a job. 14:54.720 --> 14:57.800 I think similarly, we need to put in place protection 14:57.800 --> 15:00.720 around reading people's emotions without their consent 15:00.720 --> 15:02.200 and in certain cases, 15:02.200 --> 15:06.160 like characterizing them for a job and other opportunities. 15:06.160 --> 15:09.200 So I also think that when we're reading emotion 15:09.200 --> 15:11.760 that's predictive around mental health, 15:11.760 --> 15:14.240 that that should, even though it's not medical data, 15:14.240 --> 15:16.160 that that should get the kinds of protections 15:16.160 --> 15:18.520 that our medical data gets. 15:18.520 --> 15:20.080 What most people don't know yet 15:20.080 --> 15:22.640 is right now with your smartphone use, 15:22.640 --> 15:25.280 and if you're wearing a sensor 15:25.280 --> 15:27.760 and you wanna learn about your stress and your sleep, 15:27.760 --> 15:29.040 and your physical activity, 15:29.040 --> 15:30.840 and how much you're using your phone 15:30.840 --> 15:32.640 and your social interaction, 15:32.640 --> 15:34.960 all of that non medical data, 15:34.960 --> 15:37.960 when we put it together with machine learning, 15:37.960 --> 15:40.160 now called AI, even though the founders of AI 15:40.160 --> 15:41.720 wouldn't have called it that, 15:42.960 --> 15:47.960 that capability can not only tell that you're calm right now, 15:48.440 --> 15:50.840 or that you're getting a little stressed, 15:50.840 --> 15:53.920 but it can also predict how you're likely to be tomorrow. 15:53.920 --> 15:55.880 If you're likely to be sick or healthy, 15:55.880 --> 15:58.720 happy or sad, stressed or calm. 15:58.720 --> 16:00.640 Especially when you're tracking data over time. 16:00.640 --> 16:03.760 Especially when we're tracking a week of your data or more. 16:03.760 --> 16:06.000 Do you have an optimism towards, 16:06.000 --> 16:07.800 that a lot of people on our phones 16:07.800 --> 16:10.360 are worried about this camera that's looking at us? 16:10.360 --> 16:12.520 For the most part, on balance, 16:12.520 --> 16:16.120 are you optimistic about the benefits 16:16.120 --> 16:17.480 that can be brought from that camera 16:17.480 --> 16:19.640 that's looking at billions of us, 16:19.640 --> 16:22.080 or should we be more worried? 16:22.080 --> 16:27.080 I think we should be a little bit more worried 16:28.840 --> 16:32.480 about who's looking at us and listening to us. 16:32.480 --> 16:36.680 The device sitting on your countertop in your kitchen, 16:36.680 --> 16:41.680 whether it's Alexa or Google Home or Apple, Siri, 16:42.120 --> 16:46.440 these devices want to listen, 16:47.480 --> 16:49.640 while they say ostensibly to help us. 16:49.640 --> 16:52.080 And I think there are great people in these companies 16:52.080 --> 16:54.160 who do want to help people. 16:54.160 --> 16:56.160 Let me not brand them all bad. 16:56.160 --> 16:59.320 I'm a user of products from all of these companies. 16:59.320 --> 17:04.320 I'm naming all the A companies, Alphabet, Apple, Amazon. 17:04.360 --> 17:09.120 They are awfully big companies, right? 17:09.120 --> 17:11.520 They have incredible power. 17:11.520 --> 17:16.520 And what if China were to buy them, right? 17:16.520 --> 17:19.320 And suddenly, all of that data 17:19.320 --> 17:21.880 were not part of free America, 17:21.880 --> 17:23.800 but all of that data were part of somebody 17:23.800 --> 17:26.040 who just wants to take over the world 17:26.040 --> 17:27.480 and you submit to them. 17:27.480 --> 17:31.560 And guess what happens if you so much as smirk the wrong way 17:31.560 --> 17:34.000 when they say something that you don't like? 17:34.000 --> 17:36.840 Well, they have reeducation camps, right? 17:36.840 --> 17:38.360 That's a nice word for them. 17:38.360 --> 17:40.800 By the way, they have a surplus of organs 17:40.800 --> 17:42.720 for people who have surgery these days. 17:42.720 --> 17:44.440 They don't have an organ donation problem, 17:44.440 --> 17:45.640 because they take your blood. 17:45.640 --> 17:47.480 And they know you're a match. 17:47.480 --> 17:51.640 And the doctors are on record of taking organs from people 17:51.640 --> 17:54.680 who are perfectly healthy and not prisoners. 17:54.680 --> 17:57.960 They're just simply not the favored ones of the government. 17:58.960 --> 18:03.960 And, you know, that's a pretty freaky evil society. 18:03.960 --> 18:05.920 And we can use the word evil there. 18:05.920 --> 18:07.280 I was born in the Soviet Union. 18:07.280 --> 18:11.480 I can certainly connect to the worry 18:11.480 --> 18:12.520 that you're expressing. 18:12.520 --> 18:14.920 At the same time, probably both you and I 18:14.920 --> 18:19.000 and you're very much so, you know, 18:19.000 --> 18:22.440 there's an exciting possibility 18:22.440 --> 18:27.000 that you can have a deep connection with the machine. 18:27.000 --> 18:28.000 Yeah, yeah. 18:28.000 --> 18:29.000 Right, so. 18:29.000 --> 18:35.000 Those of us, I've admitted students who say that they, 18:35.000 --> 18:37.400 you know, when you list, like, who do you most wish 18:37.400 --> 18:40.640 you could have lunch with or dinner with, right? 18:40.640 --> 18:42.680 And they'll write, like, I don't like people. 18:42.680 --> 18:44.040 I just like computers. 18:44.040 --> 18:45.760 And one of them said to me once 18:45.760 --> 18:48.480 when I had this party at my house, 18:48.480 --> 18:52.560 I want you to know this is my only social event of the year, 18:52.560 --> 18:54.840 my one social event of the year. 18:54.840 --> 18:58.080 Like, okay, now this is a brilliant machine learning person, 18:58.080 --> 18:59.080 right? 18:59.080 --> 19:01.320 And we need that kind of brilliance and machine learning. 19:01.320 --> 19:04.040 And I love that Computer Science welcomes people 19:04.040 --> 19:07.040 who love people and people who are very awkward around people. 19:07.040 --> 19:12.040 I love that this is a field that anybody could join. 19:12.040 --> 19:15.040 We need all kinds of people. 19:15.040 --> 19:17.040 And you don't need to be a social person. 19:17.040 --> 19:19.040 I'm not trying to force people who don't like people 19:19.040 --> 19:21.040 to suddenly become social. 19:21.040 --> 19:26.040 At the same time, if most of the people building the AIs 19:26.040 --> 19:29.040 of the future are the kind of people who don't like people, 19:29.040 --> 19:31.040 we've got a little bit of a problem. 19:31.040 --> 19:32.040 Hold on a second. 19:32.040 --> 19:34.040 So let me, let me push back on that. 19:34.040 --> 19:39.040 So don't you think a large percentage of the world can, 19:39.040 --> 19:41.040 you know, there's loneliness. 19:41.040 --> 19:44.040 There is a huge problem with loneliness and it's growing. 19:44.040 --> 19:47.040 And so there's a longing for connection. 19:47.040 --> 19:51.040 If you're lonely, you're part of a big and growing group. 19:51.040 --> 19:52.040 Yes. 19:52.040 --> 19:54.040 So we're in it together, I guess. 19:54.040 --> 19:56.040 If you're lonely, join the group. 19:56.040 --> 19:57.040 You're not alone. 19:57.040 --> 19:58.040 You're not alone. 19:58.040 --> 20:00.040 That's a good line. 20:00.040 --> 20:04.040 But do you think there's a, you talked about some worry, 20:04.040 --> 20:07.040 but do you think there's an exciting possibility 20:07.040 --> 20:11.040 that something like Alexa, when these kinds of tools 20:11.040 --> 20:16.040 can alleviate that loneliness in a way that other humans can't? 20:16.040 --> 20:17.040 Yeah. 20:17.040 --> 20:18.040 Yeah, definitely. 20:18.040 --> 20:21.040 I mean, a great book can kind of alleviate loneliness. 20:21.040 --> 20:22.040 Right. 20:22.040 --> 20:23.040 Exactly. 20:23.040 --> 20:25.040 Because you just get sucked into this amazing story 20:25.040 --> 20:27.040 and you can't wait to go spend time with that character. 20:27.040 --> 20:28.040 Right. 20:28.040 --> 20:30.040 And they're not a human character. 20:30.040 --> 20:32.040 There is a human behind it. 20:32.040 --> 20:35.040 But yeah, it can be an incredibly delightful way 20:35.040 --> 20:37.040 to pass the hours. 20:37.040 --> 20:39.040 And it can meet needs. 20:39.040 --> 20:43.040 Even, you know, I don't read those trashy romance books, 20:43.040 --> 20:44.040 but somebody does, right? 20:44.040 --> 20:46.040 And what are they getting from this? 20:46.040 --> 20:50.040 Well, probably some of that feeling of being there, right? 20:50.040 --> 20:54.040 Being there in that social moment, that romantic moment, 20:54.040 --> 20:56.040 or connecting with somebody. 20:56.040 --> 20:59.040 I've had a similar experience reading some science fiction books, right? 20:59.040 --> 21:01.040 And connecting with the character, Orson Scott Card. 21:01.040 --> 21:05.040 And, you know, just amazing writing and Inder's Game 21:05.040 --> 21:07.040 and Speaker for the Dead, terrible title. 21:07.040 --> 21:10.040 But those kind of books that pull you into a character, 21:10.040 --> 21:13.040 and you feel like you're, you feel very social. 21:13.040 --> 21:17.040 It's very connected, even though it's not responding to you. 21:17.040 --> 21:19.040 And a computer, of course, can respond to you. 21:19.040 --> 21:20.040 Right. 21:20.040 --> 21:21.040 So it can deepen it, right? 21:21.040 --> 21:25.040 You can have a very deep connection, 21:25.040 --> 21:29.040 much more than the movie Her, you know, plays up, right? 21:29.040 --> 21:30.040 Well, much more. 21:30.040 --> 21:34.040 I mean, movie Her is already a pretty deep connection, right? 21:34.040 --> 21:36.040 Well, but it's just a movie, right? 21:36.040 --> 21:37.040 It's scripted. 21:37.040 --> 21:38.040 It's just, you know. 21:38.040 --> 21:42.040 But I mean, like, there can be a real interaction 21:42.040 --> 21:46.040 where the character can learn and you can learn. 21:46.040 --> 21:49.040 You could imagine it not just being you and one character. 21:49.040 --> 21:51.040 You can imagine a group of characters. 21:51.040 --> 21:53.040 You can imagine a group of people and characters, 21:53.040 --> 21:56.040 human and AI connecting. 21:56.040 --> 22:01.040 Where maybe a few people can't sort of be friends with everybody, 22:01.040 --> 22:07.040 but the few people and their AIs can befriend more people. 22:07.040 --> 22:10.040 There can be an extended human intelligence in there 22:10.040 --> 22:14.040 where each human can connect with more people that way. 22:14.040 --> 22:18.040 But it's still very limited. 22:18.040 --> 22:21.040 But there are just, what I mean is there are many more possibilities 22:21.040 --> 22:22.040 than what's in that movie. 22:22.040 --> 22:24.040 So there's a tension here. 22:24.040 --> 22:28.040 So one, you expressed a really serious concern about privacy, 22:28.040 --> 22:31.040 about how governments can misuse the information. 22:31.040 --> 22:34.040 And there's the possibility of this connection. 22:34.040 --> 22:36.040 So let's look at Alexa. 22:36.040 --> 22:38.040 So personal assistance. 22:38.040 --> 22:42.040 For the most part, as far as I'm aware, they ignore your emotion. 22:42.040 --> 22:47.040 They ignore even the context or the existence of you, 22:47.040 --> 22:51.040 the intricate, beautiful, complex aspects of who you are, 22:51.040 --> 22:56.040 except maybe aspects of your voice that help it recognize 22:56.040 --> 22:58.040 speech recognition. 22:58.040 --> 23:03.040 Do you think they should move towards trying to understand your emotion? 23:03.040 --> 23:07.040 All of these companies are very interested in understanding human emotion. 23:07.040 --> 23:13.040 More people are telling Siri every day they want to kill themselves. 23:13.040 --> 23:17.040 Apple wants to know the difference between if a person is really suicidal 23:17.040 --> 23:21.040 versus if a person is just kind of fooling around with Siri. 23:21.040 --> 23:25.040 The words may be the same, the tone of voice, 23:25.040 --> 23:31.040 and what surrounds those words is pivotal to understand 23:31.040 --> 23:35.040 if they should respond in a very serious way, bring help to that person, 23:35.040 --> 23:40.040 or if they should kind of jokingly tease back, 23:40.040 --> 23:45.040 you just want to sell me for something else. 23:45.040 --> 23:48.040 Like, how do you respond when somebody says that? 23:48.040 --> 23:53.040 Well, you do want to err on the side of being careful and taking it seriously. 23:53.040 --> 23:59.040 People want to know if the person is happy or stressed. 23:59.040 --> 24:03.040 In part, well, so let me give you an altruistic reason 24:03.040 --> 24:08.040 and a business profit motivated reason, 24:08.040 --> 24:13.040 and there are people in companies that operate on both principles. 24:13.040 --> 24:17.040 Altruistic people really care about their customers 24:17.040 --> 24:20.040 and really care about helping you feel a little better at the end of the day, 24:20.040 --> 24:24.040 and it would just make those people happy if they knew that they made your life better. 24:24.040 --> 24:29.040 If you came home stressed and after talking with their product, you felt better. 24:29.040 --> 24:35.040 There are other people who maybe have studied the way affect affects decision making 24:35.040 --> 24:39.040 and prices people pay, and they know, I don't know if I should tell you, 24:39.040 --> 24:44.040 the work of Jen Lerner on heartstrings and purse strings. 24:44.040 --> 24:50.040 If we manipulate you into a slightly sadder mood, you'll pay more. 24:50.040 --> 24:54.040 You'll pay more to change your situation. 24:54.040 --> 24:58.040 You'll pay more for something you don't even need to make yourself feel better. 24:58.040 --> 25:01.040 If they sound a little sad, maybe I don't want to cheer them up. 25:01.040 --> 25:05.040 Maybe first I want to help them get something, 25:05.040 --> 25:09.040 a little shopping therapy that helps them. 25:09.040 --> 25:13.040 Which is really difficult for a company that's primarily funded on advertisements, 25:13.040 --> 25:16.040 so they're encouraged to get you to... 25:16.040 --> 25:20.040 To offer you products or Amazon that's primarily funded on you buying things from their store. 25:20.040 --> 25:25.040 Maybe we need regulation in the future to put a little bit of a wall 25:25.040 --> 25:29.040 between these agents that have access to our emotion 25:29.040 --> 25:32.040 and agents that want to sell us stuff. 25:32.040 --> 25:38.040 Maybe there needs to be a little bit more of a firewall in between those. 25:38.040 --> 25:42.040 So maybe digging in a little bit on the interaction with Alexa, 25:42.040 --> 25:45.040 you mentioned, of course, a really serious concern about, 25:45.040 --> 25:50.040 like recognizing emotion if somebody is speaking of suicide or depression and so on, 25:50.040 --> 25:54.040 but what about the actual interaction itself? 25:54.040 --> 25:57.040 Do you think... 25:57.040 --> 26:01.040 You mentioned clippy and being annoying. 26:01.040 --> 26:04.040 What is the objective function we're trying to optimize? 26:04.040 --> 26:09.040 Is it minimize annoyingness or maximize happiness? 26:09.040 --> 26:12.040 Or if we look at human relations, 26:12.040 --> 26:16.040 I think that push and pull, the tension, the dance, 26:16.040 --> 26:20.040 the annoying, the flaws, that's what makes it fun. 26:20.040 --> 26:23.040 So is there a room for... 26:23.040 --> 26:25.040 What is the objective function? 26:25.040 --> 26:29.040 In times when you want to have a little push and pull, think of kids sparring. 26:29.040 --> 26:34.040 You know, I see my sons and one of them wants to provoke the other to be upset. 26:34.040 --> 26:35.040 And that's fun. 26:35.040 --> 26:38.040 And it's actually healthy to learn where your limits are, 26:38.040 --> 26:40.040 to learn how to self regulate. 26:40.040 --> 26:43.040 You can imagine a game where it's trying to make you mad 26:43.040 --> 26:45.040 and you're trying to show self control. 26:45.040 --> 26:48.040 And so if we're doing a AI human interaction 26:48.040 --> 26:51.040 that's helping build resilience and self control, 26:51.040 --> 26:54.040 whether it's to learn how to not be a bully 26:54.040 --> 26:58.040 or how to turn the other cheek or how to deal with an abusive person in your life, 26:58.040 --> 27:03.040 then you might need an AI that pushes your buttons, right? 27:03.040 --> 27:07.040 But in general, do you want an AI that pushes your buttons? 27:07.040 --> 27:11.040 Probably depends on your personality. 27:11.040 --> 27:12.040 I don't. 27:12.040 --> 27:17.040 I want one that's respectful, that is there to serve me 27:17.040 --> 27:22.040 and that is there to extend my ability to do things. 27:22.040 --> 27:24.040 I'm not looking for a rival. 27:24.040 --> 27:26.040 I'm looking for a helper. 27:26.040 --> 27:29.040 And that's the kind of AI I'd put my money on. 27:29.040 --> 27:32.040 Your senses for the majority of people in the world, 27:32.040 --> 27:34.040 in order to have a rich experience, 27:34.040 --> 27:36.040 that's what they're looking for as well. 27:36.040 --> 27:40.040 So if you look at the movie Her, spoiler alert, 27:40.040 --> 27:45.040 I believe the program, the woman in the movie Her, 27:45.040 --> 27:50.040 leaves the person for somebody else. 27:50.040 --> 27:53.040 Says they don't want to be dating anymore. 27:53.040 --> 27:56.040 Right. 27:56.040 --> 27:59.040 Your senses, if Alexis said, you know what? 27:59.040 --> 28:03.040 I actually had enough of you for a while, 28:03.040 --> 28:05.040 so I'm going to shut myself off. 28:05.040 --> 28:07.040 You don't see that as... 28:07.040 --> 28:10.040 I'd say you're trash because I'm paid for you, right? 28:10.040 --> 28:14.040 We've got to remember, 28:14.040 --> 28:18.040 and this is where this blending human AI 28:18.040 --> 28:22.040 as if we're equals is really deceptive, 28:22.040 --> 28:26.040 because AI is something at the end of the day 28:26.040 --> 28:29.040 that my students and I are making in the lab, 28:29.040 --> 28:33.040 and we're choosing what it's allowed to say, 28:33.040 --> 28:36.040 when it's allowed to speak, what it's allowed to listen to, 28:36.040 --> 28:39.040 what it's allowed to act on, 28:39.040 --> 28:43.040 given the inputs that we choose to expose it to, 28:43.040 --> 28:45.040 what outputs it's allowed to have. 28:45.040 --> 28:49.040 It's all something made by a human, 28:49.040 --> 28:52.040 and if we want to make something that makes our lives miserable, 28:52.040 --> 28:55.040 fine, I wouldn't invest in it as a business, 28:55.040 --> 28:59.040 unless it's just there for self regulation training. 28:59.040 --> 29:02.040 But I think we need to think about what kind of future we want, 29:02.040 --> 29:05.040 and actually your question, I really like the... 29:05.040 --> 29:07.040 What is the objective function? 29:07.040 --> 29:10.040 Is it to calm people down sometimes? 29:10.040 --> 29:14.040 Is it to always make people happy and calm them down? 29:14.040 --> 29:16.040 Well, there was a book about that, right? 29:16.040 --> 29:19.040 The Brave New World, you know, make everybody happy, 29:19.040 --> 29:22.040 take your Soma if you're unhappy, take your happy pill, 29:22.040 --> 29:24.040 and if you refuse to take your happy pill, 29:24.040 --> 29:29.040 well, we'll threaten you by sending you to Iceland to live there. 29:29.040 --> 29:32.040 I lived in Iceland three years. It's a great place. 29:32.040 --> 29:35.040 Don't take your Soma, then go to Iceland. 29:35.040 --> 29:37.040 A little TV commercial there. 29:37.040 --> 29:40.040 I was a child there for a few years. It's a wonderful place. 29:40.040 --> 29:43.040 So that part of the book never scared me. 29:43.040 --> 29:48.040 But really, do we want AI to manipulate us into submission, 29:48.040 --> 29:49.040 into making us happy? 29:49.040 --> 29:56.040 Well, if you are a power obsessed, sick dictator, individual 29:56.040 --> 29:59.040 who only wants to control other people to get your jollies in life, 29:59.040 --> 30:04.040 then yeah, you want to use AI to extend your power in your scale 30:04.040 --> 30:07.040 to force people into submission. 30:07.040 --> 30:11.040 If you believe that the human race is better off being given freedom 30:11.040 --> 30:15.040 and the opportunity to do things that might surprise you, 30:15.040 --> 30:20.040 then you want to use AI to extend people's ability to build, 30:20.040 --> 30:23.040 you want to build AI that extends human intelligence, 30:23.040 --> 30:27.040 that empowers the weak and helps balance the power 30:27.040 --> 30:29.040 between the weak and the strong, 30:29.040 --> 30:32.040 not that gives more power to the strong. 30:32.040 --> 30:38.040 So in this process of empowering people and sensing people 30:38.040 --> 30:43.040 and what is your sense on emotion in terms of recognizing emotion? 30:43.040 --> 30:47.040 The difference between emotion that is shown and emotion that is felt. 30:47.040 --> 30:54.040 So yeah, emotion that is expressed on the surface through your face, 30:54.040 --> 30:57.040 your body, and various other things, 30:57.040 --> 31:00.040 and what's actually going on deep inside on the biological level, 31:00.040 --> 31:04.040 on the neuroscience level, or some kind of cognitive level. 31:04.040 --> 31:06.040 Yeah, yeah. 31:06.040 --> 31:08.040 So no easy questions here. 31:08.040 --> 31:11.040 Yeah, I'm sure there's no definitive answer, 31:11.040 --> 31:16.040 but what's your sense, how far can we get by just looking at the face? 31:16.040 --> 31:18.040 We're very limited when we just look at the face, 31:18.040 --> 31:22.040 but we can get further than most people think we can get. 31:22.040 --> 31:26.040 People think, hey, I have a great poker face, 31:26.040 --> 31:28.040 therefore all you're ever going to get from me is neutral. 31:28.040 --> 31:30.040 Well, that's naive. 31:30.040 --> 31:35.040 We can read with the ordinary camera on your laptop or on your phone. 31:35.040 --> 31:39.040 We can read from a neutral face if your heart is racing. 31:39.040 --> 31:45.040 We can read from a neutral face if your breathing is becoming irregular 31:45.040 --> 31:47.040 and showing signs of stress. 31:47.040 --> 31:53.040 We can read under some conditions that maybe I won't give you details on, 31:53.040 --> 31:57.040 how your heart rate variability power is changing. 31:57.040 --> 32:03.040 That could be a sign of stress even when your heart rate is not necessarily accelerating. 32:03.040 --> 32:06.040 Sorry, from physiosensors or from the face? 32:06.040 --> 32:09.040 From the color changes that you cannot even see, 32:09.040 --> 32:11.040 but the camera can see. 32:11.040 --> 32:13.040 That's amazing. 32:13.040 --> 32:15.040 So you can get a lot of signal. 32:15.040 --> 32:18.040 So we get things people can't see using a regular camera, 32:18.040 --> 32:22.040 and from that we can tell things about your stress. 32:22.040 --> 32:25.040 So if you were just sitting there with a blank face 32:25.040 --> 32:30.040 thinking nobody can read my emotion, well, you're wrong. 32:30.040 --> 32:34.040 So that's really interesting, but that's from visual information from the face. 32:34.040 --> 32:39.040 That's almost like cheating your way to the physiological state of the body 32:39.040 --> 32:43.040 by being very clever with what you can do with vision. 32:43.040 --> 32:44.040 With signal processing. 32:44.040 --> 32:49.040 So that's really impressive, but if you just look at the stuff we humans can see, 32:49.040 --> 32:54.040 the smile, the smirks, the subtle, all the facial actions. 32:54.040 --> 32:57.040 So then you can hide that on your face for a limited amount of time. 32:57.040 --> 33:01.040 Now, if you're just going in for a brief interview and you're hiding it, 33:01.040 --> 33:03.040 that's pretty easy for most people. 33:03.040 --> 33:08.040 If you are, however, surveilled constantly everywhere you go, 33:08.040 --> 33:13.040 then it's going to say, gee, you know, Lex used to smile a lot, 33:13.040 --> 33:15.040 and now I'm not seeing so many smiles. 33:15.040 --> 33:22.040 And Roz used to, you know, laugh a lot and smile a lot very spontaneously. 33:22.040 --> 33:26.040 And now I'm only seeing these not so spontaneous looking smiles 33:26.040 --> 33:28.040 and only when she's asked these questions. 33:28.040 --> 33:32.040 You know, that's probably not getting enough sleep. 33:32.040 --> 33:35.040 We could look at that too. 33:35.040 --> 33:37.040 So now I have to be a little careful too. 33:37.040 --> 33:42.040 When I say we, you think we can't read your emotion and we can, it's not that binary. 33:42.040 --> 33:48.040 What we're reading is more some physiological changes that relate to your activation. 33:48.040 --> 33:52.040 Now, that doesn't mean that we know everything about how you feel. 33:52.040 --> 33:54.040 In fact, we still know very little about how you feel. 33:54.040 --> 33:56.040 Your thoughts are still private. 33:56.040 --> 34:00.040 Your nuanced feelings are still completely private. 34:00.040 --> 34:02.040 We can't read any of that. 34:02.040 --> 34:06.040 So there's some relief that we can't read that. 34:06.040 --> 34:09.040 Even brain imaging can't read that. 34:09.040 --> 34:11.040 Wearables can't read that. 34:11.040 --> 34:18.040 However, as we read your body state changes and we know what's going on in your environment, 34:18.040 --> 34:21.040 and we look at patterns of those over time, 34:21.040 --> 34:27.040 we can start to make some inferences about what you might be feeling. 34:27.040 --> 34:31.040 And that is where it's not just the momentary feeling, 34:31.040 --> 34:34.040 but it's more your stance toward things. 34:34.040 --> 34:41.040 And that could actually be a little bit more scary with certain kinds of governmental, 34:41.040 --> 34:48.040 control free people who want to know more about are you on their team or are you not. 34:48.040 --> 34:51.040 And getting that information through over time. 34:51.040 --> 34:54.040 So you're saying there's a lot of signal by looking at the change over time. 34:54.040 --> 35:00.040 So you've done a lot of exciting work both in computer vision and physiological sounds like wearables. 35:00.040 --> 35:03.040 What do you think is the best modality for, 35:03.040 --> 35:08.040 what's the best window into the emotional soul? 35:08.040 --> 35:10.040 Is it the face? Is it the voice? 35:10.040 --> 35:12.040 Depends what you want to know. 35:12.040 --> 35:14.040 It depends what you want to know. 35:14.040 --> 35:16.040 Everything is informative. 35:16.040 --> 35:18.040 Everything we do is informative. 35:18.040 --> 35:20.040 So for health and well being and things like that, 35:20.040 --> 35:29.040 do you find the wearable, measuring physiological signals is the best for health based stuff? 35:29.040 --> 35:35.040 So here I'm going to answer empirically with data and studies we've been doing. 35:35.040 --> 35:37.040 We've been doing studies now. 35:37.040 --> 35:40.040 These are currently running with lots of different kinds of people, 35:40.040 --> 35:44.040 but where we've published data, and I can speak publicly to it, 35:44.040 --> 35:47.040 the data are limited right now to New England college students. 35:47.040 --> 35:50.040 So that's a small group. 35:50.040 --> 35:52.040 Among New England college students, 35:52.040 --> 36:01.040 when they are wearing a wearable like the emphatic embrace here that's measuring skin conductance, movement, temperature, 36:01.040 --> 36:10.040 and when they are using a smartphone that is collecting their time of day of when they're texting, 36:10.040 --> 36:17.040 who they're texting, their movement around it, their GPS, the weather information based upon their location, 36:17.040 --> 36:22.040 and when it's using machine learning and putting all of that together and looking not just at right now, 36:22.040 --> 36:28.040 but looking at your rhythm of behaviors over about a week. 36:28.040 --> 36:38.040 When we look at that, we are very accurate at forecasting tomorrow's stress, mood, and happy sad, mood, and health. 36:38.040 --> 36:43.040 And when we look at which pieces of that are most useful, 36:43.040 --> 36:48.040 first of all, if you have all the pieces, you get the best results. 36:48.040 --> 36:53.040 If you have only the wearable, you get the next best results. 36:53.040 --> 37:00.040 And that's still better than 80% accurate at forecasting tomorrow's levels. 37:00.040 --> 37:12.040 Isn't that exciting because the wearable stuff with physiological information, it feels like it violates privacy less than the noncontact face based methods. 37:12.040 --> 37:14.040 Yeah, it's interesting. 37:14.040 --> 37:18.040 I think what people sometimes don't, you know, it's fine. 37:18.040 --> 37:22.040 The early days people would say, oh, wearing something or giving blood is invasive, right? 37:22.040 --> 37:26.040 Whereas a camera is less invasive because it's not touching you. 37:26.040 --> 37:33.040 I think on the contrary, the things that are not touching you are maybe the scariest because you don't know when they're on or off. 37:33.040 --> 37:39.040 And you don't know when, and you don't know who's behind it, right? 37:39.040 --> 37:52.040 A wearable, depending upon what's happening to the data on it, if it's just stored locally or if it's streaming and what it is being attached to. 37:52.040 --> 37:59.040 In a sense, you have the most control over it because it's also very easy to just take it off, right? 37:59.040 --> 38:01.040 Now it's not sensing me. 38:01.040 --> 38:07.040 So if I'm uncomfortable with what it's sensing, now I'm free, right? 38:07.040 --> 38:13.040 If I'm comfortable with what it's sensing, then, and I happen to know everything about this one and what it's doing with it. 38:13.040 --> 38:15.040 So I'm quite comfortable with it. 38:15.040 --> 38:20.040 Then I'm, you know, I have control, I'm comfortable. 38:20.040 --> 38:26.040 Control is one of the biggest factors for an individual in reducing their stress. 38:26.040 --> 38:32.040 If I have control over it, if I know others to know about it, then my stress is a lot lower. 38:32.040 --> 38:38.040 And I'm making an informed choice about whether to wear it or not, or when to wear it or not. 38:38.040 --> 38:40.040 I want to wear it sometimes, maybe not others. 38:40.040 --> 38:43.040 Right. So that control, yeah, I'm with you. 38:43.040 --> 38:49.040 That control, even if, yeah, the ability to turn it off is a really empowering thing. 38:49.040 --> 38:50.040 It's huge. 38:50.040 --> 39:00.040 And we need to maybe, you know, if there's regulations, maybe that's number one to protect is people's ability to, is easy to opt out as to opt in. 39:00.040 --> 39:01.040 Right. 39:01.040 --> 39:04.040 So you've studied a bit of neuroscience as well. 39:04.040 --> 39:16.040 How have looking at our own minds, sort of the biological stuff or the neurobiological, the neuroscience look at the signals in our brain, 39:16.040 --> 39:20.040 helped you understand the problem and the approach of effective computing. 39:20.040 --> 39:28.040 So originally I was a computer architect and I was building hardware and computer designs and I wanted to build ones that work like the brain. 39:28.040 --> 39:33.040 So I've been studying the brain as long as I've been studying how to build computers. 39:33.040 --> 39:35.040 Have you figured out anything yet? 39:35.040 --> 39:37.040 Very little. 39:37.040 --> 39:39.040 It's so amazing. 39:39.040 --> 39:46.040 You know, they used to think like, oh, if you remove this chunk of the brain and you find this function goes away, well, that's the part of the brain that did it. 39:46.040 --> 39:53.040 And then later they realize if you remove this other chunk of the brain, that function comes back and oh no, we really don't understand it. 39:53.040 --> 40:02.040 Brains are so interesting and changing all the time and able to change in ways that will probably continue to surprise us. 40:02.040 --> 40:14.040 When we were measuring stress, you may know the story where we found an unusual big skin conductance pattern on one wrist and one of our kids with autism. 40:14.040 --> 40:20.040 And in trying to figure out how on earth you could be stressed on one wrist and not the other, like how can you get sweaty on one wrist, right? 40:20.040 --> 40:26.040 When you when you get stressed with that sympathetic fight or flight response, like you kind of should like sweat more in some places than others, 40:26.040 --> 40:28.040 but not more on one wrist than the other. 40:28.040 --> 40:31.040 That didn't make any sense. 40:31.040 --> 40:37.040 We learned that what had actually happened was a part of his brain had unusual electrical activity. 40:37.040 --> 40:44.040 And that caused an unusually large sweat response on one wrist and not the other. 40:44.040 --> 40:49.040 And since then we've learned that seizures cause this unusual electrical activity. 40:49.040 --> 40:58.040 And depending where the seizure is, if it's in one place and it's staying there, you can have a big electrical response we can pick up with a wearable at one part of the body. 40:58.040 --> 41:07.040 You can also have a seizure that spreads over the whole brain generalized grand mal seizure and that response spreads and we can pick it up pretty much anywhere. 41:07.040 --> 41:13.040 As we learned this and then later built embrace that's now FDA cleared for seizure detection. 41:13.040 --> 41:23.040 We have also built relationships with some of the most amazing doctors in the world who not only help people with unusual brain activity or epilepsy, 41:23.040 --> 41:35.040 but some of them are also surgeons and they're going in and they're implanting electrodes, not just to momentarily read the strange patterns of brain activity that we'd like to see return to normal, 41:35.040 --> 41:42.040 but also to read out continuously what's happening in some of these deep regions of the brain during most of life when these patients are not seizing. 41:42.040 --> 41:45.040 Most of the time they're not seizing. Most of the time they're fine. 41:45.040 --> 41:58.040 And so we are now working on mapping those deep brain regions that you can't even usually get with EEG scalp electrodes because the changes deep inside don't reach the surface. 41:58.040 --> 42:04.040 But interesting when some of those regions are activated, we see a big skin conductance response. 42:04.040 --> 42:08.040 Who would have thunk it, right? Like nothing here, but something here. 42:08.040 --> 42:17.040 In fact, right after seizures that we think are the most dangerous ones that precede what's called Sudep, sudden unexpected death and epilepsy. 42:17.040 --> 42:23.040 There's a period where the brain waves go flat and it looks like the person's brain has stopped, but it hasn't. 42:23.040 --> 42:32.040 The activity has gone deep into a region that can make the cortical activity look flat, like a quick shutdown signal here. 42:32.040 --> 42:38.040 It can unfortunately cause breathing to stop if it progresses long enough. 42:38.040 --> 42:43.040 Before that happens, we see a big skin conductance response in the data that we have. 42:43.040 --> 42:46.040 The longer this flattening, the bigger our response here. 42:46.040 --> 42:52.040 So we have been trying to learn, you know, initially like, why are we getting a big response here when there's nothing here? 42:52.040 --> 42:55.040 Well, it turns out there's something much deeper. 42:55.040 --> 43:05.040 So we can now go inside the brains of some of these individuals, fabulous people who usually aren't seizing and get this data and start to map it. 43:05.040 --> 43:09.040 So that's active research that we're doing right now with top medical partners. 43:09.040 --> 43:18.040 So this wearable sensor that's looking at skin conductance can capture sort of the ripples of the complexity of what's going on in our brain. 43:18.040 --> 43:27.040 So this little device, you have a hope that you can start to get the signal from the interesting things happening in the brain. 43:27.040 --> 43:35.040 Yeah, we've already published the strong correlations between the size of this response and the flattening that happens afterwards. 43:35.040 --> 43:42.040 And unfortunately also in a real suit up case where the patient died because the, well, we don't know why. 43:42.040 --> 43:48.040 We don't know if somebody was there, it would have definitely prevented it, but we know that most suit ups happen when the person's alone. 43:48.040 --> 44:01.040 And in this case, a suit up is an acronym, S U D E P, and it stands for the number two cause of years of life lost actually among all neurological disorders. 44:01.040 --> 44:06.040 Stroke is number one, suit up is number two, but most people haven't heard of it. 44:06.040 --> 44:11.040 Actually, I'll plug my Ted talk, it's on the front page of Ted right now, that talks about this. 44:11.040 --> 44:14.040 And we hope to change that. 44:14.040 --> 44:21.040 I hope everybody who's heard of SIDS and stroke will now hear of suit up because we think in most cases it's preventable. 44:21.040 --> 44:27.040 If people take their meds and aren't alone when they have a seizure, not guaranteed to be preventable. 44:27.040 --> 44:31.040 There are some exceptions, but we think most cases probably are. 44:31.040 --> 44:41.040 So you have this embrace now in the version two wristband, right, for epilepsy management. That's the one that's FDA approved. 44:41.040 --> 44:42.040 Yes. 44:42.040 --> 44:44.040 Which is kind of cleared. 44:44.040 --> 44:45.040 They say. 44:45.040 --> 44:46.040 Sorry. 44:46.040 --> 44:47.040 No, it's okay. 44:47.040 --> 44:49.040 It essentially means it's approved for marketing. 44:49.040 --> 44:50.040 Got it. 44:50.040 --> 44:53.040 Just a side note, how difficult is that to do? 44:53.040 --> 44:57.040 It's essentially getting FDA approval for computer science technology. 44:57.040 --> 45:04.040 It's so agonizing. It's much harder than publishing multiple papers in top medical journals. 45:04.040 --> 45:11.040 Yeah, we published peer reviewed, top medical journal, neurology, best results, and that's not good enough for the FDA. 45:11.040 --> 45:19.040 Is that system, so if we look at the peer review of medical journals, there's flaws, the strengths, is the FDA approval process? 45:19.040 --> 45:22.040 How does it compare to the peer review process? 45:22.040 --> 45:24.040 Does it have its strength? 45:24.040 --> 45:26.040 I take peer review over FDA any day. 45:26.040 --> 45:28.040 Is that a good thing? Is that a good thing for FDA? 45:28.040 --> 45:32.040 You're saying, does it stop some amazing technology from getting through? 45:32.040 --> 45:33.040 Yeah, it does. 45:33.040 --> 45:37.040 The FDA performs a very important good role in keeping people safe. 45:37.040 --> 45:44.040 They keep things, they put you through tons of safety testing and that's wonderful and that's great. 45:44.040 --> 45:48.040 I'm all in favor of the safety testing. 45:48.040 --> 45:54.040 Sometimes they put you through additional testing that they don't have to explain why they put you through it. 45:54.040 --> 46:00.040 You don't understand why you're going through it and it doesn't make sense and that's very frustrating. 46:00.040 --> 46:09.040 Maybe they have really good reasons and it would do people a service to articulate those reasons. 46:09.040 --> 46:10.040 Be more transparent. 46:10.040 --> 46:12.040 Be more transparent. 46:12.040 --> 46:27.040 As part of Empatica, we have sensors, so what kind of problems can we crack? What kind of things from seizures to autism to, I think I've heard you mentioned depression. 46:27.040 --> 46:35.040 What kind of things can we alleviate? Can we detect? What's your hope of how we can make the world a better place with this wearable tech? 46:35.040 --> 46:48.040 I would really like to see my fellow brilliant researchers step back and say, what are the really hard problems that we don't know how to solve 46:48.040 --> 46:57.040 that come from people maybe we don't even see in our normal life because they're living in the poorer places, they're stuck on the bus, 46:57.040 --> 47:05.040 they can't even afford the Uber or the Lyft or the data plan or all these other wonderful things we have that we keep improving on. 47:05.040 --> 47:14.040 Meanwhile, there's all these folks left behind in the world and they're struggling with horrible diseases, with depression, with epilepsy, with diabetes, 47:14.040 --> 47:25.040 with just awful stuff that maybe a little more time and attention hanging out with them and learning what are their challenges in life, what are their needs? 47:25.040 --> 47:36.040 How do we help them have job skills? How do we help them have a hope and a future and a chance to have the great life that so many of us building technology have? 47:36.040 --> 47:43.040 And then how would that reshape the kinds of AI that we build? How would that reshape the new apps that we build? 47:43.040 --> 47:57.040 Or maybe we need to focus on how to make things more low cost and green instead of $1,000 phones. I mean, come on. Why can't we be thinking more about things that do more with less for these books? 47:57.040 --> 48:09.040 Quality of life is not related to the cost of your phone. It's not something that, it's been shown that what, about $75,000 of income and happiness is the same. 48:09.040 --> 48:16.040 However, I can tell you, you get a lot of happiness from helping other people. You get a lot more than $75,000 buys. 48:16.040 --> 48:30.040 So how do we connect up the people who have real needs with the people who have the ability to build the future and build the kind of future that truly improves the lives of all the people that are currently being left behind? 48:30.040 --> 48:53.040 So let me return just briefly on a point, maybe in movie her. So do you think if we look farther into the future, you said so much of the benefit from making our technology more empathetic to us human beings would make them better tools, empower us, make our lives better. 48:53.040 --> 49:08.040 If we look farther into the future, do you think we'll ever create an AI system that we can fall in love with and loves us back on a level that is similar to human to human interaction, like in the movie her or beyond? 49:08.040 --> 49:25.040 I think we can simulate it in ways that could, you know, sustain engagement for a while. Would it be as good as another person? I don't think so for if you're used to like good people. 49:25.040 --> 49:39.040 If you've just grown up with nothing but abuse and you can't stand human beings, can we do something that helps you there that gives you something through a machine? Yeah, but that's pretty low bar, right? If you've only encountered pretty awful people. 49:39.040 --> 50:00.040 If you've encountered wonderful, amazing people, we're nowhere near building anything like that. And I'm, I would not bet on building it. I would bet instead on building the kinds of AI that helps all helps kind of raise all boats that helps all people be better people helps all 50:00.040 --> 50:14.040 people figure out if they're getting sick tomorrow and helps give them what they need to stay well tomorrow. That's the kind of AI I want to build that improves human lives, not the kind of AI that just walks on the Tonight Show and people go, wow, look how smart that is. 50:14.040 --> 50:18.040 You know, really, like, and then it goes back in a box, you know. 50:18.040 --> 50:40.040 So on that point, if we continue looking a little bit into the future, do you think an AI that's empathetic and does improve our lives need to have a physical presence, a body, and even let me cautiously say the C word consciousness and even fear of mortality. 50:40.040 --> 50:59.040 So some of those human characteristics, do you think it needs to have those aspects? Or can it remain simply machine learning tool that learns from data of behavior that that learns to make us based on previous patterns feel better? 50:59.040 --> 51:02.040 Or does it need those elements of consciousness? 51:02.040 --> 51:13.040 It depends on your goals. If you're making a movie, it needs a body, it needs a gorgeous body, it needs to act like it has consciousness, it needs to act like it has emotion, right, because that's what sells. 51:13.040 --> 51:17.040 That's what's going to get me to show up and enjoy the movie. Okay. 51:17.040 --> 51:34.040 In real life, does it need all that? Well, if you've read Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead, you know, it could just be like a little voice in your earring, right, and you could have an intimate relationship and it could get to know you, and it doesn't need to be a robot. 51:34.040 --> 51:43.040 But that doesn't make this compelling of a movie, right? I mean, we already think it's kind of weird when a guy looks like he's talking to himself on the train, you know, even though it's earbuds. 51:43.040 --> 51:57.040 So we have these, embodied is more powerful, embodied when you compare interactions with an embodied robot versus a video of a robot versus no robot. 51:57.040 --> 52:08.040 The robot is more engaging, the robot gets our attention more, the robot when you walk in your house is more likely to get you to remember to do the things that you asked it to do because it's kind of got a physical presence. 52:08.040 --> 52:21.040 You can avoid it if you don't like it, it could see you're avoiding it. There's a lot of power to being embodied. There will be embodied AIs. They have great power and opportunity and potential. 52:21.040 --> 52:32.040 There will also be AIs that aren't embodied that just our little software assistants that help us with different things that may get to know things about us. 52:32.040 --> 52:42.040 Will they be conscious? There will be attempts to program them to make them appear to be conscious. We can already write programs that make it look like, what do you mean? 52:42.040 --> 52:52.040 Of course, I'm aware that you're there, right? I mean, it's trivial to say stuff like that. It's easy to fool people. But does it actually have conscious experience like we do? 52:52.040 --> 53:01.040 Nobody has a clue how to do that yet. That seems to be something that is beyond what any of us knows how to build now. 53:01.040 --> 53:11.040 Will it have to have that? I think you can get pretty far with a lot of stuff without it. Will we accord it rights? 53:11.040 --> 53:16.040 Well, that's more a political game that it is a question of real consciousness. 53:16.040 --> 53:25.040 Can you go to jail for turning off Alexa? It's a question for an election maybe a few decades from now. 53:25.040 --> 53:34.040 Sophia Robot's already been given rights as a citizen in Saudi Arabia, right? Even before women have full rights. 53:34.040 --> 53:42.040 Then the robot was still put back in the box to be shipped to the next place where it would get a paid appearance, right? 53:42.040 --> 53:50.040 Yeah, it's dark and almost comedic, if not absurd. 53:50.040 --> 54:03.040 So I've heard you speak about your journey in finding faith and how you discovered some wisdoms about life and beyond from reading the Bible. 54:03.040 --> 54:11.040 And I've also heard you say that you said scientists too often assume that nothing exists beyond what can be currently measured. 54:11.040 --> 54:28.040 Materialism and scientism. In some sense, this assumption enables the near term scientific method, assuming that we can uncover the mysteries of this world by the mechanisms of measurement that we currently have. 54:28.040 --> 54:38.040 But we easily forget that we've made this assumption. So what do you think we missed out on by making that assumption? 54:38.040 --> 54:49.040 It's fine to limit the scientific method to things we can measure and reason about and reproduce. That's fine. 54:49.040 --> 54:57.040 I think we have to recognize that sometimes we scientists also believe in things that happen historically, you know, like I believe the Holocaust happened. 54:57.040 --> 55:11.040 I can't prove events from past history scientifically. You prove them with historical evidence, right, with the impact they had on people with eyewitness testimony and things like that. 55:11.040 --> 55:21.040 So a good thinker recognizes that science is one of many ways to get knowledge. It's not the only way. 55:21.040 --> 55:31.040 And there's been some really bad philosophy and bad thinking recently called scientism where people say science is the only way to get to truth. 55:31.040 --> 55:43.040 And it's not. It just isn't. There are other ways that work also, like knowledge of love with someone. You don't prove your love through science, right? 55:43.040 --> 56:01.040 So history, philosophy, love, a lot of other things in life show us that there's more ways to gain knowledge and truth if you're willing to believe there is such a thing, and I believe there is, than science. 56:01.040 --> 56:14.040 I am a scientist, however, and in my science, I do limit my science to the things that the scientific method can do. But I recognize that it's myopic to say that that's all there is. 56:14.040 --> 56:28.040 Right. Just like you listed, there's all the why questions. And really, we know if we're being honest with ourselves, the percent of what we really know is basically zero relative to the full mystery of those. 56:28.040 --> 56:34.040 Measure theory, a set of measures, if I have a finite amount of knowledge, which I do. 56:34.040 --> 56:45.040 So you said that you believe in truth. So let me ask that old question. What do you think this thing is all about? Life on earth? 56:45.040 --> 56:53.040 Life, the universe and everything. I can't put Douglas Adams 42. My favorite number. By the way, that's my street address. 56:53.040 --> 57:00.040 My husband and I guessed the exact same number for our house. We got to pick it. And there's a reason we picked 42. Yeah. 57:00.040 --> 57:05.040 So is it just 42 or do you have other words that you can put around it? 57:05.040 --> 57:15.040 Well, I think there's a grand adventure and I think this life is a part of it. I think there's a lot more to it than meets the eye and the heart and the mind and the soul here. 57:15.040 --> 57:28.040 We see, but through a glass dimly in this life, we see only a part of all there is to know. If people haven't read the Bible, they should if they consider themselves educated. 57:28.040 --> 57:36.040 And you could read Proverbs and find tremendous wisdom in there that cannot be scientifically proven. 57:36.040 --> 57:43.040 But when you read it, there's something in you like a musician knows when the instruments played right and it's beautiful. 57:43.040 --> 57:54.040 There's something in you that comes alive and knows that there's a truth there that like your strings are being plucked by the master instead of by me playing when I pluck it. 57:54.040 --> 57:57.040 But probably when you play, it sounds spectacular. 57:57.040 --> 58:11.040 And when you encounter those truths, there's something in you that sings and knows that there is more than what I can prove mathematically or program a computer to do. 58:11.040 --> 58:19.040 Don't get me wrong. The math is gorgeous. The computer programming can be brilliant. It's inspiring, right? We want to do more. 58:19.040 --> 58:26.040 None of this squashes my desire to do science or to get knowledge through science. I'm not dissing the science at all. 58:26.040 --> 58:33.040 I grow even more in awe of what the science can do because I'm more in awe of all there is we don't know. 58:33.040 --> 58:41.040 And really at the heart of science, you have to have a belief that there's truth that there's something greater to be discovered. 58:41.040 --> 58:48.040 And some scientists may not want to use the faith word, but it's faith that drives us to do science. 58:48.040 --> 59:00.040 It's faith that there is truth that there's something to know that we don't know that it's worth knowing that it's worth working hard and that there is meaning that there is such a thing as meaning, 59:00.040 --> 59:07.040 which by the way, science can't prove either. We have to kind of start with some assumptions that there's things like truth and meaning. 59:07.040 --> 59:14.040 And these are really questions philosophers own, right? This is their space of philosophers and theologians at some level. 59:14.040 --> 59:24.040 So these are things science, you know, if we when people claim that science will tell you all truth, that's there's a name for that. 59:24.040 --> 59:29.040 It's it's its own kind of faith. It's scientism and it's very myopic. 59:29.040 --> 59:37.040 Yeah, there's a much bigger world out there to be explored in ways that science may not, at least for now, allows to explore. 59:37.040 --> 59:45.040 Yeah. And there's meaning and purpose and hope and joy and love and all these awesome things that make it all worthwhile too. 59:45.040 --> 59:49.040 I don't think there's a better way to end it, Ross. Thank you so much for talking today. 59:49.040 --> 1:00:11.040 Thanks, Lex. What a pleasure. Great questions.