Dr. Rana el Kaliouby wants more human-centered AI

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1:17What does an AI-first human-machine interface look like? Right, if you're designing an interface from scratch, Is it really going to be like your smartphone, or what else could it be? That's Rana Alkalyubi, a leading innovator in the field of emotion AI. As in, how machines can learn to measure and simulate human emotions. She's also my friend and colleague. AI can unlock human potential. And it can be both massively economically successful and good for people. so it can help us be healthier, more productive, more knowledgeable, good for the planet. And then building empathy into these devices, too.

2:03I think that's so important. We often talk about the importance of IQ when it comes to AI. But Rana wants us to also consider EQ. Emotional intelligence is key to making more human-centric AI. Rana has dedicated her career to this conviction. She co-founded Affectiva, a company building technology to measure complex human emotions. She's also an investor and author of the best-selling memoir, Girl Decoded. And now she's adding a new title to the list, podcast host. Pioneers of AI goes behind the scenes of the AI revolution and gives you the tools to understand what's coming next. You've got to have incredible talent at every position.

2:54It's like this huge push. There are fires burning when you're going home. Can you believe it? Such an idiot. And then you go back to, this is totally going to be amazing. There are so many easy ways. I have no idea what to do. Sorry, we made a mistake. But you have to time it right. Oops. Working out of a three-bedroom apartment. Stuff that just seems absolutely nut balls. Ten years later, we're like, well, that's just how you do it. We haven't made it just how you do it. This is Masters of Scale.

3:29Rana El-Kahyubi is a longtime friend of Masters of Scale. Today, we want to reintroduce her and welcome her new show, Pioneers of AI, to the podcast pantheon. And anytime I get to speak with Rana about where AI is headed, especially on the fronts of empathy and emotion, it's a thrill. Let's get to it. Welcome, Rana El-Khalyubi, to Masters of Scale. I've been looking forward to this for a while. Me too. Hi, Reid. Let's do a little bit of the origin story. So say a little bit about your path to becoming an AI academic, like where you grew up and how you chose your PhD and that kind of stuff. Well, let's see.

4:16So I was born in Egypt, as you know, grew up around the Middle East. Both my parents were technologists, so we were always exposed to like a lot of technology early on. I wanted to be an academic, so I decided to study computer science as an undergraduate. Got really fascinated, I still am, by this human-machine touchpoint, the human-machine interfaces, and how it not only affects our communication with technology, but our relationship with one another too. So that became my area of focus. And I left Egypt to go do my PhD at Cambridge University in computer vision and machine learning over 25 years ago.

4:53So people think AI, you know, is like this new thing. I'm like, some of us have been doing this for a while. And pioneered an area or a category within AI called emotion recognition or artificial emotional intelligence. Towards the end of my PhD, I met this MIT professor. She was visiting Cambridge University to give a talk. And we clicked and she invited me to join her as a postdoc at MIT. And that's how I ended up in the US. Ah, what, you know, like one of the things that I think is also for people who want to go in deeper into your story is the memoir Girl Decoded, obviously a great, you know, clever title in lots of different ways.

5:35People way under describe the EQ issues within AI. How much of that understanding in addition to the kind of the path of your life would people find from the memoir? Yeah, the memoir is this juxtaposition of my personal journey with the journey of building the technology because it's so intertwined. So I talk about like, okay, why do emotions matter, right? They influence every aspect of our lives, everything from our little decisions every day to like big decisions we make, how we learn, how we connect with one another. And I'm sure our listeners will recognize that it's not just your IQ that matters, right?

6:14your cognitive intelligence, but your emotional intelligence, your ability to tap into other people's emotional experiences. And that's how we motivate behavior change, influence people, persuade people to do things. So people who have higher EQs tend to be just better leaders and better partners. I do believe that's true for technology as well. So what's your view? What's your view on that? Well, I mean, one of the things that I think is funny is the people who say emotions don't affect how I make decisions, or I think actually, in fact, it affects them a lot, and they just don't have visibility.

6:49The question around what words you choose or how different words affect you in different ways, even if they have largely similar semantic meaning, the choice of it. For example, very classically, you might say, I think I might have this point of view versus I have this point of view. Well, very different emotional impacts. But that's not what people typically focus on. Rana believes that AI models need to be designed to pick up on such nuances, models that can understand the difference between a user saying, I think versus I know. She sees this as fundamental to AI's development. And while others have ignored emotion in AI, she's dived in headfirst.

7:37The company she co-founded, Affectiva, revolutionized Emotion AI. Rana has always been a trailblazer. From academia to entrepreneurship, she's plowed her way in a field where she was often the only woman and the only Muslim in the room. You know, I used to wear the hijab. I wore it for 12 years. And I put it on willingly and I took it off when it just didn't feel like me anymore. I also moved to the U.S. with, you know, as a single mom with two young kids. They were 10 and 4 at the time, and now they're 21 and 15. And so I think I'd like to believe that I've had this entrepreneurial spirit in me.

8:18And when I have conviction, I just go for it. And I think one of my core values is having courage to chart a path that maybe hasn't been charted before. So when it came to Affectiva, so here I am at MIT. You know, I was funded by the National Science Foundation and Ross Picard's lab. But we started to get a lot of commercial interest in our technology, which is this facial expression recognition technology. And all these Fortune 500 companies wanted to use it for a variety of applications. And so I remember we walked into the Media Lab director's office at the time. It was Frank Moss. And we said, Frank, we need more dollars to, like, hire more PhD students.

8:57And he thought about it for a second. and he said, you know, this is not research anymore. There's a commercialization opportunity here. And my initial reaction was like, whoa, wait, I'm about to apply for faculty, you know, don't mess with my academic plans. But then I realized, and that was the tipping point for me. And I think that's my message to academics who are listening to this. Entrepreneurship is an amazing path to actually bring your technology to scale, right? Like you take it from this academic setting where you're publishing papers and maybe 10 people are using it to like scaling it worldwide.

9:33And that to me is what's so magical about starting a business. That sense of taking insight and thought and research that you get from, you know, the academic side and then applying it to how do you build scale companies, scale technologies, other kinds of things. You don't have to say it wasn't easy, by the way. I want to share a story. Please. Like it's more of a confession, really. You know, I'm a first-time founder. When I started Affectiva, it was my first time doing this. And I think I was really, you know, there was a lot of stuff I didn't know. So, for example, we had one of the investors who was courting us at the time send us an email.

10:09And he said, one line, send me your BS. And I was like, I have no idea what this guy's talking about. Turns out he was asking for our balance sheet, right? Although, very early startups, BS also means the other thing that people think. Right, exactly. Yeah, I was like, the only BS I know of, I can't really attach in an email. But then I was also like, our very first product roadmap, we were like, Q1, we're going to like penetrate the advertising research market. Q2, we're going to do education. Q3 will be health. It was so naive, and we had so underestimated how hard it would be. But I actually think that's that's okay because that gives you that conviction and that kind of belief that you can go for it is what keeps you going I think I don't know do you yeah do you agree I mean I think a lot of the entrepreneurship stuff you cannot fully prepare there's no I prepare everything you could prepare some, but you just have to have that chutzpah and grit and, you know, kind of very broad learning capabilities to do that kind of thing.

11:23Yeah, that's right. So go into a little bit more depth about both your research and Affectiva and what the shape of that has been. So the core technology we developed at Affectiva was essentially an emotion recognition system that tracked and identified your various facial expressions and then mapped those to any number of emotional states. And when we first started, it could only recognize a smile, an eyebrow raise, a brow furrow. But over time, it now has a repertoire of over 40 different emotional states. And the range of applications is numerous. We service about a third of the Fortune 500 companies globally to understand the emotional connection their consumers have with their products and videos and content.

12:07And then a number of years ago, we pivoted to the automotive market where we now build driver monitoring systems and cabin monitoring systems to really understand what's happening in the car and with the drivers. Driver attentive, are they falling asleep? And think of it as being a co-pilot to the both driver and also passengers in the vehicle. In 2021, Affectiva was acquired by a company called SmartEye. But the closing of one door meant the opening of the next. Rana has since launched her career as an investor, focusing on companies revolutionizing the field of AI. So I've been investing for the last three years.

12:44I started a fund with a friend of mine, Rob May. We've made 40 investments. And then I'm now partnering with Gabby Zeiderveld, who was part of my team at Affectiva. And we are launching Blue Tulip Ventures to invest in human-centric AI. So entrepreneurship again, but in a different form. I just love being in innovation kind of spaces. And I also love supporting founders on their journeys. I found from my experience that some of my investors were so instrumental to our journey at Affectiva, being thought partners, being strategic advisors, being connectors and door openers. And I want to do the same for founders of early stage companies.

13:29I also think it's an amazing time in AI. And actually, you're one of my inspirations and mentors when it comes to that. It's an amazing time to be investing in AI. It's still early days. I think the next generation AI companies and transformative companies of our generation are being born now. And how cool would it be to play a part in these companies' journeys? Now, part of what we're doing in this podcast is we're going to be introducing another podcast. because in addition to your hats as academic, inventor, entrepreneur, CEO, investor, you're also becoming a podcaster. And part of what you're going to be doing is pioneers of AI.

14:14So say a little bit about what the podcast is, why now, what chart, what path, what journey will the podcast be heading out on? Yeah, it's another kind of entrepreneurial journey, I would say. So Pioneers of AI is a guide for all things AI to people who are both experts in the AI space who kind of just struggle with keeping up with all the innovations and what's happening in AI. But ideally, one of our goals is to also expand the audience for AI and make AI more inclusive so that you can come to the podcast to understand AI, embrace AI, anticipate what's coming next with AI. We definitely want to take a balanced view on all the potential good that can come out of AI, but we also want to be underscoring and highlighting where things can go wrong so that hopefully as a society, we can kind of guard against that.

15:07We will be featuring AI builders, of course. So those in the kitchen kind of building the next generation of AI technologies and use cases, but also AI thinkers who are particularly thinking about the implications of AI on culture, on society, on our arts, on science, on education, on parenting. Right. So we want to be tackling some of these like everyday questions as it relates to, OK, how is AI going to impact my life on a personal and professional level? I also am very passionate about platforming voices that we don't typically hear from, so that's going to be one of our goals as well. Pioneers of AI is a podcast that focuses on all the big questions around AI and the latest trends.

15:55Many technologists will say that the biggest trend in the forecast is agentic AI. That is, AI that can perform tasks for us without any assistance. It's an important topic and one that Rana is addressing head on in her podcast. The best AI agent, in my opinion, would be one that knows you really well. And one way to know you really well is, of course, to get access to all of your information and maybe whatever health device you're wearing on your bank account so that it can act on your behalf and whatnot. But another way it gets to really know you is through your emotional experiences. And what's your emotional state?

16:31Are you stressed? Are you happy? Are you anxious? so that it can really customize and personalize its interactions just the way an awesome friend would do. And I think that's still missing from where AI is at. And memory plays a big part of that. How do you build actual models of memory in getting to learn a person? Yeah, because part of how trust is established is that you believe that the person knows you, cares about you, understands what's kind of good for you and interests and so forth and will act in those ways. And memory, of course, is essential to all of that. Right. Right. And if it's not there, right, then the interaction suffers.

17:14Yeah. You know this as deeply as anyone in the world, but like obviously one of the things about this agentic future is going to be kind of establishing trust. So what do you think is going to be important, not just for gaining trust, but actually, in fact, being a faithful holder of trust? I would say really knowing what's happening to your data. First of all, understanding who's behind these agentic AIs, the company that's building these technologies, I think that needs to be trustworthy. Knowing where and how your data is being used, that's so important. So I think a certain level of transparency around that is important.

17:56And also, control over that. The relationship between a person and their AI agents is so important. Like how much autonomy do you want to give your AI agents? And does that build over time as you trust them more and more? So there's a lot of questions that we ought to be asking kind of as design decisions when we're building these AI agents. I'm so looking forward to Rana's podcast conversations on Pioneers of AI. She's just getting started. And when we come back from a break, Rana takes the mic and asks me a few of her questions about AI. Stay with us.

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19:48aws.amazon.com slash activate and start building. Expanding your business in the U.S. can feel like a maze. Every state has its own payroll, benefits, and compliance rules, which can pull your focus away from growth. That's why founders use Deal. Deal is the Professional Employer Organization, or PEO, that gives you a dedicated HR expert plus Fortune 500 level benefits for your team. The National Association of PEOs says businesses can grow twice as fast if they use one. So if you're scaling, make it simple with Deal. Go to deel.com slash mos and get up to three months free.

20:35We're back with a special Masters of Scale introduction for Pioneers of AI. with AI scientist, entrepreneur, and investor Rana El-Khalyubi. You can find this interview on the Masters of Scale YouTube channel and more about the new show at PioneersOf.ai.

20:58We're going to switch hosts, and you're now the host for the second half of this podcast. So I am handing the mic over to you. So exciting. And I will start by saying you also have a new podcast joining our network. Share a bit about Possible. What's it about? So one of the things that I think is a great disservice to humanity that's happening across media, across government discussions and so forth, is a fear and dystopia approach to technology first versus a possibility and a creation. And it doesn't mean that it needs to be blind optimism or blind utopic because navigating how you get the good is really important.

21:52Like, for example, when you're driving somewhere, you don't get somewhere by going, I'm first going to figure out all the things that could go wrong before I get in the car. Like I'm going to go, well, I could spin out of control. I'm going to make sure I could hit a tree. You've got to start driving towards a location. And you have to have some place you're going. right you can't just go well if i eliminate all the bad then the good will happen that's not actually in fact how a journey and a creation and invention happens it's a going towards something so the real question is what should you shape towards and part of the reason i decided to add possible into the the pantheon so we have master's scale for kind of scale companies and entrepreneurs and and journey and impact and then possible is okay what could possibly go right yeah of course But like, what should we be building towards?

22:44It's definitely positive, but it's positive in a, you know, how do you chart the journey? How do you navigate? And that's why I added it in to the pantheon of podcasts. I love that because sometimes you need to create the possibility, like literally for people, and then you plant that idea or you create that image or picture of the future and then people can work towards it. But right now there is so much fear. So you talk a lot about AI unlocking human potential. What do you mean by that? So last year, I published the first book on AI, co-written with AI. My co-writer was GPD4. And what I wanted to do is I wanted to show where I understand why, you know, John McCarthy et al.

23:28you know, called it artificial intelligence, especially back then. But, you know, it actually now has a little bit of a misnomer. And so I called it amplification intelligence because it's an amplifier of human capabilities. And that doesn't mean that just like other technologies, sometimes parts of it so outstrip human that the technology just does it itself. I mean, like, for example, we don't have humans plowing farm fields anymore. So it's like any bit of technology kind of moves this and it changes that landscape. But in the change in the landscape, part of, of course, the discourse has been kind of almost like the movie Idiocracy.

24:09Like, is AI going to be doing everything? And are we going to be sitting on the couches, you know, drinking Gatorade and watching numbing Aldous Huxley Brave New World, you know, becoming just kind of sensate, you know, bundles of emphatic, lymphatic response. And I just think that it's just not very likely. You have all these discussions about like, well, I could just fire my marketing department, use GBD4. It's like, well, no, you can't. Right, exactly. And by the way, marketing is a competition between multiple organizations. And, of course, if you're not using GBD4 and other AI tools in your marketing today, you're falling behind.

24:56You're not using key tool sets. But it's human beings doing it and being amplified in various ways. And you should be looking at what are the ways in this human competition, just like, for example, I use really good running shoes or I use flippers or I use scuba tanks or I use da-da-da. what's the way that I can be deploying this technology to be furthering my human objectives, my humanist objectives, my business objectives, et cetera. And so that's what the unlocking human potential. And by the way, AI and the amplification it brings will have some of those challenges for people, full stop. And we need to help and be more sympathetic.

25:36But ultimately, better for your children, better for society, better for industry. And if you keep a learning and evolving mindset, it can be better for you too. So for some of our listeners who are listening to this conversation and they're still kind of weary of AI, what are some of the applications of AI that you're most excited about? Well, part of when I'm talking to government folks who are like, you know, press is telling me that my primary job is to limit big tech. And part of the problem, of course, is a lot of the driver of AI, of this new industrial, this cognitive industrial revolution we're getting, is emerging from big tech.

26:18And I say, well, actually, in fact, while this is what everyone's kind of singing the song they should be doing, I have an alternative vision, which is we have a line of sight. We could construct in a small number of months a medical assistant that is as capable as kind of call it, you know, an average GP or better, that could run for small number of dollars per hour. How do you get that to be made and available to everybody? And then, you know, everybody who has access to a smartphone. And then you have a medical assistant for the billions of people in the world who do not have access to a doctor.

27:00And by the way, even here in the U.S., there are millions of people who do not really have access to a doctor, other than an ER room, and they may not even have access to an ER room. So that's one, and that will require some modifications of liability law, some incentives, and other things. The second one, which I also think is super important, is a tutor on every skill, every capability, every subject, for every age, infinitely patient. Again, runnable on a smartphone. Wealthy people have always been able to afford tutors for themselves or for their kids. Now it can be everybody. Yeah. I love that you've highlighted those two applications in particular.

27:49I'm passionate about both of them. It's this idea of democratizing access to quality health and quality education around the world. It's very possible, like right back to your new podcast, it is so possible. Like The data's there. You can create these co-pilots for health and career coaches that can be kind of learning companions and career companions. It's so exciting. What are some of the things that concern you when it comes to AI? Look, it is definitely possible that bad things can happen. Now, one of the reasons why I kind of advocate very strongly against the existential risk, the robots are coming, Terminator movie, et cetera, is because most of the real bad things to focus on are AI in the hands of, you know, kind of bad human beings.

28:39Whether it's criminals, you know, so cybercrime, terrorists, a variety of things, rogue states, you know, interference with elections, you know, all of this kind of stuff in the hands of human beings with bad intents, because we have those too, are the top concerns that I have. Now, again, a little bit of the tech lash is people tend to say, well, but what about, for example, things like hallucination or perpetuating a racial stereotype? And shouldn't we not launch until there was zero of that? And I was like, well, I tend to have the same view that I have on most things, which is you can never get all these things in these complicated systems to zero.