0
SPEAKER_00
The following is a conversation with Rana L. Kalyubi, a pioneer in the field of emotion recognition and human-centric artificial intelligence.
0
SPEAKER_00
She is the founder of Effectiva, deputy CEO of SmartEye, author of Girl Decoded, and one of the most brilliant, kind, inspiring, and fun human beings I ve gotten the chance to talk to.
0
SPEAKER_00
And now, a quick few second mention of each sponsor.
0
SPEAKER_00
Check them out in the description.
0
SPEAKER_00
It s the best way to support this podcast.
0
SPEAKER_00
We ve got Mizzen and Main for style, Weights and Biases for machine learning, Notion for collaboration, Insight Tracker for bio-monitoring, and ExpressVPN for privacy.
0
SPEAKER_00
Choose wisely, my friends.
0
SPEAKER_00
And now, onto the full ad reads.
0
SPEAKER_00
As always, no ads in the middle, I hate those.
0
SPEAKER_00
As a fan of podcasts, I hate those, so as long as I have control of a thing, I m not gonna do them.
0
SPEAKER_00
But these ads I do now, I try to make them interesting, but if you must, skip.
0
SPEAKER_00
And if I m being honest, break my heart in the process.
0
SPEAKER_00
But please do check out the sponsors.
0
SPEAKER_00
I enjoy their stuff, maybe you will too.
0
SPEAKER_00
This show is brought to you by Mizzen and Maine, the maker of comfortable, stylish dress shirts and other menswear.
0
SPEAKER_00
I ve actually been packing, I should be packing right now.
0
SPEAKER_00
That sounds weird, out of context.
0
SPEAKER_00
I m packing a suitcase full of clothes.
0
SPEAKER_00
And I packed a bunch of Miz and Imei shirts because I m going to Vegas and also, I m actually not sure where I m going after that, probably back to Boston, traveling a bit.
0
SPEAKER_00
And that s the thing I can really count on.
0
SPEAKER_00
So there s always going to be a bunch of black t-shirts.
0
SPEAKER_00
That s like the super comfortable thing.
0
SPEAKER_00
The extra step off from that is the Miz and Amain black dress shirts.
0
SPEAKER_00
And then of course there is the suit and tie.
0
SPEAKER_00
So I have all of that.
0
SPEAKER_00
But my sort of balance between suit and tie and a t-shirt is a Miz and Amain dress shirt.
0
SPEAKER_00
Super classy, comfortable.
0
SPEAKER_00
I just love it.
0
SPEAKER_00
Right now you can get a special discount.
0
SPEAKER_00
Just go to Mizandamain.com and use promo code Lex.
0
SPEAKER_00
This show is brought to you by Weights & Biases, the company helping machine learning teams build better models faster.
0
SPEAKER_00
It really is one of my favorite companies, not just for the fact that they are doing machine learning or helping teams and individuals do machine learning, but that they re helping
0
SPEAKER_00
Just the entire community, the spirit of the machine learning community, they re helping on all fronts.
0
SPEAKER_00
On the research front, on the individual developer front, on the small company, medium-sized company, large company front, on the educational front, the whole thing.
0
SPEAKER_00
They support, like I said, the machine learning research community.
0
SPEAKER_00
Their tools are free for personal use, and their Teams feature is available for free to academic researchers.
0
SPEAKER_00
Companies like OpenAI, NVIDIA, iRobot, and more use Weights and Biases tools every day to build their models.
0
SPEAKER_00
Join over 200,000 machine learning engineers and data scientists when you sign up at lexfriedman.com slash W-N-I-G-E-S.
0
SPEAKER_00
This show is also brought to you by Notion, a note-taking and team collaboration tool.
0
SPEAKER_00
They combine note-taking, document sharing, wikis, project management, and much, much, much more.
0
SPEAKER_00
When you go to all kinds of places like Stack Exchange looking for advice about productivity and note-taking, all the cool kids, the cutting edge are always going to recommend Notion.
0
SPEAKER_00
Notion is just the go-to tool.
0
SPEAKER_00
In terms of the feature set, but also how intuitive it is to use that feature set, the interface itself is accessible, like the learning curve is pretty, what is it?
0
SPEAKER_00
You can learn it really quickly.
0
SPEAKER_00
That s not a steep learning curve, that s like a shallow learning curve, I guess.
0
SPEAKER_00
Anyway, it s easy to learn, but the more you learn, the more powerful the tool becomes.
0
SPEAKER_00
Now that s for the individual.
0
SPEAKER_00
The thing they re really trying to sell you on is this is not just for the individual.
0
SPEAKER_00
It s also for companies, for startups, as they say, the full-on operating system for running every aspect of your company.
0
SPEAKER_00
So if you re either an individual or a startup or both, I guess, you can get started for free at Notion.com.
0
SPEAKER_00
This show is also brought to you by InsideTracker, a service I use to track biological data.
0
SPEAKER_00
They have a bunch of plans, a lot of them include blood tests that give you a bunch of information about your body and help you make decisions about your health.
0
SPEAKER_00
They use machine learning algorithms to take all that data as input and to make predictions in terms of positive diet and lifestyle changes you should make.
0
SPEAKER_00
It s obvious to me that those kinds of predictions should come from
0
SPEAKER_00
your personalized data.
0
SPEAKER_00
So to me, InsideTracker, all of the effort they re putting into this, the way they re making this happen, are just paving the way to an obvious future, which is going to be more and more effective lifestyle change, prediction, recommendation, and also medicine broadly.
0
SPEAKER_00
This is the future.
0
SPEAKER_00
If it s done right, it s a great future.
0
SPEAKER_00
Get special savings for a limited time when you go to insighttracker.com slash Lex.
0
SPEAKER_00
And finally, this show is also brought to you by one of my favorite sponsors, ExpressVPN.
0
SPEAKER_00
They ve been with me all along.
0
SPEAKER_00
I mean, not just as sponsors, as a tool.
0
SPEAKER_00
You know, it s the VPN I ve used for so, so many years.
0
SPEAKER_00
And the look has changed a little bit, but the simplicity and the elegance, the obvious nature of a big button that turns the thing on hasn t changed.
0
SPEAKER_00
You set the location, you have a button, you press to turn it on.
0
SPEAKER_00
It works.
0
SPEAKER_00
It works wonderfully.
0
SPEAKER_00
You know, what do you want from a VPN?
0
SPEAKER_00
It s an incredibly useful and important service.
0
SPEAKER_00
And ExpressVPN does it better than anybody else I ve tried.
0
SPEAKER_00
Once you turn it on, it s super fast, which is probably the main thing you want from a VPN.
0
SPEAKER_00
What else can I say?
0
SPEAKER_00
It works on every operating system, any kind of device, from Linux to Android, everything, everything I use.
0
SPEAKER_00
Anyway, the love for ExpressVPN that I have is almost nearly infinite.
0
SPEAKER_00
So if you re looking for a VPN, you should definitely check them out, and you should do so at expressvpn.com slash legspod for an extra three months free.
0
SPEAKER_00
This is the Lex Friedman Podcast.
0
SPEAKER_00
To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description.
0
SPEAKER_00
And now, dear friends, here s Rana El Kaliouby.
0
SPEAKER_00
You grew up in the Middle East, in Egypt.
0
SPEAKER_00
What is a memory from that time that makes you smile?
0
SPEAKER_00
Or maybe a memory that stands out as helping your mind take shape and helping you define yourself in this world.
0
SPEAKER_01
So the memory that stands out is we used to live in my grandma s house.
0
SPEAKER_01
She used to have these mango trees in her garden, and in the summer, and so mango season was like July and August, and so in the summer, she would invite all my aunts and uncles and cousins, and it was just like maybe there were like 20 or 30 people in the house, and she would cook all this amazing food, and us, the kids, we would go down the garden, and we would pick all these mangoes,
0
SPEAKER_01
And I don t know, I think it s just the bringing people together, like that always stuck with me, the warmth.
0
SPEAKER_00
Around the mango tree.
0
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, around the mango tree and there s just like the joy, the joy of being together around food and I m a terrible cook, so I guess that didn t, that memory didn t translate to me kind of doing the same.
0
SPEAKER_01
I love hosting people.
0
SPEAKER_00
Do you remember colors, smells?
0
SPEAKER_00
Is that what, like what, how does memory work?
0
SPEAKER_00
Like what do you visualize?
0
SPEAKER_00
Do you visualize people s faces, smiles?
0
SPEAKER_00
Do you, is there colors?
0
SPEAKER_00
Is there like a theme to the colors?
0
SPEAKER_00
Is it smells because of food involved?
0
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I think that s a great question.
0
SPEAKER_01
So those Egyptian mangoes, there s a particular type that I love and it s called Darwesi mangoes and they re kind of, you know, they re oval and they have a little red in them.
0
SPEAKER_01
So they re red and mango colored on the outside.
0
SPEAKER_01
So I remember that.
0
SPEAKER_00
Does red indicate like extra sweetness?
0
SPEAKER_00
Is that?
0
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
0
SPEAKER_00
That means like it s nice and sweet.
0
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it s nice and ripe and stuff, yeah.
0
SPEAKER_00
What s like a definitive food of Egypt?
0
SPEAKER_00
You know, there s like these almost stereotypical foods in different parts of the world, like Ukraine, invented borscht.
0
SPEAKER_00
Well, it s just this beet soup that you put sour cream on.
0
SPEAKER_00
See, it s not, I can t, see, if you, if you know what it is, I think you know it s delicious, but if I explain it, it s just not gonna sound delicious, I feel like.
0
SPEAKER_00
Beet soup, this doesn t make any sense, but that s kinda, and you probably have actually seen pictures of it, because it s one of the traditional foods in Ukraine, in Russia, in different parts of the Slavic world.
0
SPEAKER_00
But it s become so cliche and stereotypical that you almost don t mention it, but it s still delicious.
0
SPEAKER_00
I visited Ukraine, I ate that every single day.
0
SPEAKER_01
So.
0
SPEAKER_01
Do you make it yourself?
0
SPEAKER_01
How hard is it to make?
0
SPEAKER_00
No, I don t know.
0
SPEAKER_00
I think to make it well, like anything, like Italians, they say, well, tomato sauce is easy to make, but to make it right, that s like a generational skill.
0
SPEAKER_00
So anyway, is there something like that in Egypt?
0
SPEAKER_00
Is there a culture of food?
0
SPEAKER_01
There is, and actually, we have a similar kind of soup.
0
SPEAKER_01
It s called molokhia, and it s made of this green plant.
0
SPEAKER_01
It s somewhere between spinach and kale, and you mince it, and then you cook it in chicken broth.
0
SPEAKER_01
And my grandma used to make, and my mom makes it really well, and I try to make it, but it s not as great.
0
SPEAKER_01
So we used to have that, and then we used to have it alongside stuffed pigeons.
0
SPEAKER_01
I m pescatarian now, so I don t eat that anymore.
0
SPEAKER_00
Stuffed pigeon.
0
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it s like, it was really yummy.
0
SPEAKER_01
It s the one thing I miss about, you know, now that I m pescatarian and I don t eat any- The stuffed pigeons?
0
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, the stuffed pigeons.
0
SPEAKER_00
Is it, what are they stuffed with?
0
SPEAKER_00
If that doesn t bother you too much to describe.
0
SPEAKER_01
No, no, it s stuffed with a lot of like just rice and- Oh, got it, got it, got it.
0
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it s just rice, yeah, so.
0
SPEAKER_00
And you also, you ve said that you re first in your book that your first computer was an Atari and Space Invaders was your favorite game.
0
SPEAKER_00
Is that when you first fell in love with computers, would you say?
0
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I would say so.
0
SPEAKER_00
Video games or just the computer itself?
0
SPEAKER_00
Just something about the machine.
0
SPEAKER_00
Ooh, this thing.
0
SPEAKER_00
There s magic in here.
0
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I think the magical moment is definitely like playing video games with my, I have two younger sisters and we just like had fun together, like playing games.
0
SPEAKER_01
But the other memory I have is my first code.
0
SPEAKER_01
The first code I wrote, I wrote, I drew a Christmas tree and I m Muslim, right?
0
SPEAKER_01
So it s kind of, it was kind of funny that I, that I, that the first thing I did was like this Christmas tree, so.
0
SPEAKER_01
And that s when I realized, wow, you can write code to do all sorts of really cool stuff.
0
SPEAKER_01
I must have been like six or seven at the time.
0
SPEAKER_00
So you can write programs and the programs do stuff for you.
0
SPEAKER_00
That s power.
0
SPEAKER_00
If you think about it, that s empowering.
0
SPEAKER_00
That s AI.
0
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I know what it is.
0
SPEAKER_00
I don t know if that, you see like,
0
SPEAKER_00
I don t know if many people think of it that way when they first learned to program.
0
SPEAKER_00
They just love the puzzle of it.
0
SPEAKER_00
Like, ooh, this is cool, this is pretty.
0
SPEAKER_00
It s a Christmas tree, but it s power.
0
SPEAKER_00
Eventually, I guess you couldn t at the time, but eventually this thing, if it s interesting enough, if it s a pretty enough Christmas tree, it can be run by millions of people and bring them joy.
0
SPEAKER_00
Like that little thing, and then because it s digital, it s easy to spread.
0
SPEAKER_00
So you just created something that s easily spreadable to millions of people.
0
SPEAKER_00
It s hard to think that way when you re six.
0
SPEAKER_00
In the book you write, I am who I am because I was raised by a particular set of parents, both modern and conservative, forward thinking and yet locked in tradition.
0
SPEAKER_00
I m a Muslim and I feel I m stronger, more centered for it.
0
SPEAKER_00
I adhere to the values of my religion, even if I m not as dutiful as I once was.
0
SPEAKER_00
And I am a new American and I m thriving on the energy vitality and entrepreneurial spirit of this great country.
0
SPEAKER_00
So let me ask you about your parents.
0
SPEAKER_00
What have you learned about life from them, especially when you were young?
0
SPEAKER_01
So both my parents, they re Egyptian, but they moved to Kuwait.
0
SPEAKER_01
Actually, there s a cute story about how they met.
0
SPEAKER_01
So my dad taught COBOL in the 70s.
0
SPEAKER_01
Nice.
0
SPEAKER_01
And my mom decided to learn programming, so she signed up to take his COBOL programming class.
0
SPEAKER_01
And he tried to date her and she was like, no, no, no, I don t date.
0
SPEAKER_01
And so he s like, okay, I ll propose.
0
SPEAKER_01
And that s how they got married.
0
SPEAKER_00
Whoa, strong move.
0
SPEAKER_00
I know, right, exactly right.
0
SPEAKER_00
That s really impressive.
0
SPEAKER_00
Those cobalt guys know how to impress a lady.
0
SPEAKER_00
So yeah, so what have you learned from them?
0
SPEAKER_01
So definitely grit.
0
SPEAKER_01
One of the core values in our family is just hard work.
0
SPEAKER_01
There were no slackers in our family.
0
SPEAKER_01
And that s something that s definitely stayed with me, both as a professional, but also in my personal life.
0
SPEAKER_01
But I also think my mom, my mom always used to like,
0
SPEAKER_01
I don t know, it was like unconditional love.
0
SPEAKER_01
Like I just knew my parents would be there for me kind of regardless of what I chose to do.
0
SPEAKER_01
And I think that s very powerful.
0
SPEAKER_01
And they got tested on it because I kind of challenged, you know, I challenged cultural norms and I kind of took a different path, I guess, than what s expected of, you know, a woman in the Middle East.
0
SPEAKER_01
And I, you know, they still love me, which is, which is, I m so grateful for that.
0
SPEAKER_00
When was like a moment that was the most challenging for them?
0
SPEAKER_00
Which moment where they had to come face to face with the fact that you re a bit of a rebel?
0
SPEAKER_01
I think the first big moment was when I
0
SPEAKER_01
I had just gotten married, but I decided to go do my PhD at Cambridge University.
0
SPEAKER_01
And because my husband at the time, he s now my ex, ran a company in Cairo, he was gonna stay in Egypt.
0
SPEAKER_01
So it was gonna be a long distance relationship.
0
SPEAKER_01
And that s very unusual in the Middle East for a woman to just head out and kind of pursue her career.
0
SPEAKER_01
And so my dad and my parents-in-law both said,
0
SPEAKER_01
You know, we do not approve of you doing this, but now you re under the jurisdiction of your husband, so he can make the call.
0
SPEAKER_01
And luckily for me, he was supportive.
0
SPEAKER_01
He said, you know, this is your dream come true.
0
SPEAKER_01
You ve always wanted to do a PhD.
0
SPEAKER_01
I m going to support you.
0
SPEAKER_01
So I think that was the first time where, you know, I challenged the cultural norms.
0
SPEAKER_00
Was that scary?
0
SPEAKER_01
Oh my God, yes.
0
SPEAKER_01
It was totally scary.
0
SPEAKER_00
What s the biggest culture shock from there to Cambridge, to London?
0
SPEAKER_01
Well, that was also during right around September 11th.
0
SPEAKER_01
So everyone thought that there was gonna be a third world war.
0
SPEAKER_01
And at the time I used to wear the hijab, so I was very visibly Muslim.
0
SPEAKER_01
And so my parents just were, they were afraid for my safety.
0
SPEAKER_01
But anyways, when I got to Cambridge, because I was so scared, I decided to take off my headscarf and wear a hat instead.
0
SPEAKER_01
So I just went to class wearing these like British hat, which was, in my opinion, actually worse than just showing up in a headscarf.
0
SPEAKER_01
Because it was just so awkward, right?
0
SPEAKER_01
Like sitting in class with like all these little men.
0
SPEAKER_00
Trying to fit in.
0
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
0
SPEAKER_00
Like a spy.
0
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
0
SPEAKER_01
So after a few weeks of doing that, I was like, to heck with that.
0
SPEAKER_01
I m just going to go back to wearing my headscarf.
0
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, you wore the hijab, so starting in 2000 and for 12 years after.
0
SPEAKER_00
So it s always, whenever you re in public, you have to wear the head covering.
0
SPEAKER_00
Can you speak to that, to the hijab, maybe your mixed feelings about it?
0
SPEAKER_00
Like what does it represent in its best case?
0
SPEAKER_00
What does it represent in the worst case?
0
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
0
SPEAKER_01
You know, I think there s a lot of, I guess I ll first start by saying I wore it voluntarily.
0
SPEAKER_01
I was not forced to wear it.
0
SPEAKER_01
And in fact, I was one of the very first women in my family to decide to put on the hijab.
0
SPEAKER_01
And my family thought it was really odd, right?
0
SPEAKER_01
Like they were like, why do you want to put this on?
0
SPEAKER_01
And at its best, it s a sign of modesty, humility.
0
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
It s like me wearing a suit.
1
SPEAKER_00
People are like, why are you wearing a suit?
1
SPEAKER_00
It s a step back into some kind of tradition, a respect for tradition of sorts.
1
SPEAKER_00
So you said because it s by choice, you re kind of free to make that choice to celebrate a tradition of modesty.
1
SPEAKER_01
Exactly.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I actually made it my own.
1
SPEAKER_01
I remember I would really match the color of my headscarf with what I was wearing.
1
SPEAKER_01
It was a form of self-expression, and at its best, I loved wearing it.
1
SPEAKER_01
You know, I have a lot of questions around how we practice religion and religion and, you know,
1
SPEAKER_01
And I think also it was a time where I was spending a lot of time going back and forth between the U.S.
1
SPEAKER_01
and Egypt, and I started meeting a lot of people in the U.S.
1
SPEAKER_01
who were just amazing people, very purpose-driven, people who have very strong core values, but they re not Muslim.
1
SPEAKER_01
That s okay, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
And so that was when I just had a lot of questions.
1
SPEAKER_01
And politically also the situation in Egypt was when the Muslim Brotherhood ran the country and I didn t agree with their ideology.
1
SPEAKER_01
It was at a time when I was going through a divorce, like it was like just the perfect storm of like political personal conditions where I was like, this doesn t feel like me anymore.
1
SPEAKER_01
And it took a lot of courage to take it off because culturally it s not, it s okay if you don t wear it, but it s really not okay to wear it and then take it off.
1
SPEAKER_00
But you re still, so you have to do that while still maintaining a deep core and pride in the origins, in your origin story.
1
SPEAKER_01
Totally.
1
SPEAKER_00
So still being Egyptian, still being a Muslim.
1
SPEAKER_01
Right, and being, I think, generally, like, faith-driven?
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
But what that means changes year by year for you.
1
SPEAKER_00
It s like a personal journey.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, exactly.
1
SPEAKER_00
What would you say is the role of faith in that part of the world?
1
SPEAKER_00
Like how do you say, you mention it a bit in the book too.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I mean I think there is something really powerful about just believing that there s a bigger force
1
SPEAKER_01
You know, there s a kind of surrendering, I guess, that comes with religion.
1
SPEAKER_01
And you surrender and you have this deep conviction that it s going to be okay, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
Like, the universe is out to do amazing things for you and it s going to be okay.
1
SPEAKER_01
And there s strength to that.
1
SPEAKER_01
Like, even when you re going through adversity, you just know that it s going to work out.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it gives you like an inner peace, a calmness.
1
SPEAKER_01
Exactly, exactly.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it s faith in all the meanings of that word.
1
SPEAKER_01
Right.
1
SPEAKER_00
Faith that everything is going to be okay.
1
SPEAKER_00
And it is because time passes and time cures all things.
1
SPEAKER_00
It s like a calmness with the chaos of the world.
1
SPEAKER_01
And also there s like,
1
SPEAKER_01
I m a true believer of this, that something at a specific moment in time can look like it s catastrophic and it s not what you wanted in life.
1
SPEAKER_01
But then time passes and then you look back and there s a silver lining, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
It maybe closed the door, but it opened a new door for you.
1
SPEAKER_01
And so I m a true believer in that, that there s a silver lining in almost anything in life.
1
SPEAKER_01
You just have to have this faith or conviction that it s gonna work out.
1
SPEAKER_01
So.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it s such a beautiful way to see a shady feeling.
1
SPEAKER_00
So if you feel shady about a current situation,
1
SPEAKER_00
I mean, it almost is always true, unless it s the cliche thing of if it doesn t kill you, whatever doesn t kill you makes you stronger.
1
SPEAKER_00
It does seem that over time, when you take a perspective on things, that the hardest moments and periods of your life are the most meaningful.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, yeah, so over time you get to have that perspective.
1
SPEAKER_00
What about, because you mentioned Kuwait, what about, let me ask you about war.
1
SPEAKER_00
What s the role of war and peace, maybe even the big love and hate in that part of the world, because it does seem to be a part of the world where there s turmoil.
1
SPEAKER_00
There was turmoil, there s still turmoil.
1
SPEAKER_01
It is so unfortunate, honestly.
1
SPEAKER_01
It s such a waste of human resources and human mindshare.
1
SPEAKER_01
I mean, at the end of the day, we all kind of want the same things.
1
SPEAKER_01
We want human connection.
1
SPEAKER_01
We want joy.
1
SPEAKER_01
We want to feel fulfilled.
1
SPEAKER_01
We want to feel a life of purpose.
1
SPEAKER_01
I just find it baffling, honestly, that we are still having to grapple with that.
1
SPEAKER_01
I have a story to share about this.
1
SPEAKER_01
You know, I grew up, I m Egyptian, American now, but, you know, originally from Egypt.
1
SPEAKER_01
And when I first got to Cambridge, it turned out my office mate, like my PhD kind of, you know, we ended up becoming friends, but she was from Israel.
1
SPEAKER_01
And we didn t know, yeah, we didn t know how it was gonna be like.
1
SPEAKER_00
Did you guys sit there just staring at each other for a bit?
1
SPEAKER_01
Actually, she, because I arrived before she did, and it turns out she emailed our PhD advisor and asked him if she thought it was gonna be okay.
1
SPEAKER_00
Oh, this is around 9-11 too.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, and Peter Robinson, our PhD advisor, was like, yeah, just as an academic institution, just show up.
1
SPEAKER_01
And we became super good friends.
1
SPEAKER_01
We were both new moms, like we both had our kids during our PhD.
1
SPEAKER_01
We were both doing artificial emotional intelligence.
1
SPEAKER_01
She was looking at speech, I was looking at the face.
1
SPEAKER_01
The culture was so similar.
1
SPEAKER_01
Our jokes were similar.
1
SPEAKER_01
It was just, I was like, why on earth are our countries, why is there all this like war and tension?
1
SPEAKER_01
And I think it falls back to the narrative, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
If you change the narrative, like whoever creates this narrative of war,
1
SPEAKER_01
I don t know, we should have women run the world.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, that s one solution, the good women, because there s also evil women in the world.
1
SPEAKER_00
True, true, okay.
1
SPEAKER_00
But yes, yes, there could be less war if women ran the world.
1
SPEAKER_00
The other aspect is, it doesn t matter the gender, the people in power,
1
SPEAKER_00
I get to see this with Ukraine and Russia and different parts of the world around that conflict now.
1
SPEAKER_00
And that s happening in Yemen as well and everywhere else.
1
SPEAKER_00
There s these narratives told by the leaders to the populace and those narratives take hold and everybody believes that.
1
SPEAKER_00
they have a distorted view of the humanity on the other side.
1
SPEAKER_00
In fact, especially during war, you don t even see the people on the other side as human, or as equal intelligence, or worth, or value as you.
1
SPEAKER_00
You tell all kinds of narratives about them being Nazis, or Jews,
1
SPEAKER_00
Dom or whatever narrative you want to weave around that or evil.
1
SPEAKER_00
But I think when you actually meet them face to face, you realize they re like the same.
1
SPEAKER_01
Exactly right.
1
SPEAKER_00
It s actually a big shock for people to realize like,
1
SPEAKER_00
that they ve been essentially lied to within their country.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I kind of have faith that social media, as ridiculous as it is to say, or any kind of technology is able to bypass the walls that governments put up.
1
SPEAKER_00
and connect people directly, and then you get to realize, ooh, people fall in love across different nations and religions and so on, and that, I think, ultimately can cure a lot of our ills, especially sort of in person.
1
SPEAKER_00
I also think that if leaders met in person to have a conversation, that could cure a lot of the ills of the world.
1
SPEAKER_00
especially in private.
1
SPEAKER_00
Let me ask you about the women running the world.
1
SPEAKER_00
So gender does in part perhaps shape the landscape of just our human experience.
1
SPEAKER_00
So in what ways was it limiting and in what ways was it empowering for you to be a woman in the Middle East?
1
SPEAKER_01
I think just going back to my comment on women running the world, I think it comes back to empathy, which has been a common thread throughout my entire career.
1
SPEAKER_01
It s this idea of human connection.
1
SPEAKER_01
Once you build common ground with a person or a group of people, you build trust, you build loyalty, you build
1
SPEAKER_01
And then you can turn that into like behavior change and motivation and persuasion.
1
SPEAKER_01
So it s like empathy and emotions are just at the center of everything we do.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I think being from the Middle East, kind of this human connection is very strong.
1
SPEAKER_01
Like we have this running joke that if you come to Egypt for a visit, people are gonna, will know everything about your life like right away, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
I have no problems asking you about your personal life.
1
SPEAKER_01
There s no like no boundaries really, no personal boundaries in terms of getting to know people.
1
SPEAKER_01
We get emotionally intimate like very, very quickly.
1
SPEAKER_01
But I think people just get to know each other like,
1
SPEAKER_01
authentically, I guess.
1
SPEAKER_01
You know, there isn t this like superficial level of getting to know people.
1
SPEAKER_01
You just try to get to know people really deeply.
1
SPEAKER_01
Totally, because you can put yourself in this person s shoe and kind of, yeah, imagine, you know, what challenges they re going through.
1
SPEAKER_01
And so I think I ve definitely taken that with me.
1
SPEAKER_01
Generosity is another one too, like just being generous with your time and love and attention.
1
SPEAKER_01
even with your wealth, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
Even if you don t have a lot of it, you re still very generous.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I think that s another.
1
SPEAKER_00
Enjoying the humanity of other people.
1
SPEAKER_00
And so do you think there s a useful difference between men and women in that aspect and empathy?
1
SPEAKER_00
Or is doing these kind of big general groups, does that hinder progress?
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I actually don t wanna overgeneralize.
1
SPEAKER_01
I mean, some of the men I know are like the most empathetic humans.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I strive to be empathetic.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, you re actually very empathetic.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, so I don t wanna overgeneralize.
1
SPEAKER_01
Although, one of the researchers I worked with when I was at Cambridge, Professor Simon Baring-Cohen, he s Sasha Baring-Cohen s cousin.
1
SPEAKER_01
And he runs the Autism Research Center at Cambridge, and he s written multiple books on autism.
1
SPEAKER_01
And one of his theories is the empathy scale, like the systemizers and the empathizers,
1
SPEAKER_01
There s a disproportionate amount of computer scientists and engineers who are systemizers and perhaps not great empathizers.
1
SPEAKER_01
And then, you know, there s more men in that bucket, I guess, than women.
1
SPEAKER_01
And then there s more women in the empathizer s bucket.
1
SPEAKER_01
So again, not to overgeneralize.
1
SPEAKER_00
I sometimes wonder about that.
1
SPEAKER_00
It s been frustrating to me how many, I guess, systemizers there are in the field of robotics.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
It s actually encouraging to me because I care about, obviously, social robotics, and because there s more opportunity.
1
SPEAKER_00
for people that are empathic.
1
SPEAKER_01
Exactly, I totally agree.
1
SPEAKER_01
So it s nice.
1
SPEAKER_00
So every robotist I talk to, they don t see the human as interesting, it s not exciting, you want to avoid the human at all costs, it s a safety concern to be touching the human, which it is, but it s also an opportunity for deep connection or collaboration or all that kind of stuff.
1
SPEAKER_00
And because most brilliant robotists don t
1
SPEAKER_00
care about the human, it s an opportunity.
1
SPEAKER_00
In your case, it s a business opportunity too, but in general an opportunity to explore those ideas.
1
SPEAKER_00
in this beautiful journey to Cambridge, to UK, and then to America, what s the moment or moments that were most transformational for you as a scientist and as a leader?
1
SPEAKER_00
So you became an exceptionally successful CEO, founder, researcher, scientist, and so on.
1
SPEAKER_00
Was there a phase shift there where like, I can be somebody, I can really do something in this world?
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, so actually just kind of a little bit of background.
1
SPEAKER_01
So the reason why I moved from Cairo to Cambridge, UK to do my PhD is because I had a very clear career plan.
1
SPEAKER_01
I was like, OK, I ll go abroad, get my PhD, going to crush it in three or four years, come back to Egypt and teach.
1
SPEAKER_01
It was very clear, very well laid out.
1
SPEAKER_00
Was topic clear or no?
1
SPEAKER_00
Did you have a- The topic, well, I did my PhD around building artificial emotional intelligence and looking at- No, but in your master plan ahead of time when you re sitting by the mango tree, did you know it s gonna be artificial intelligence or no?
1
SPEAKER_01
No, no, that I did not know.
1
SPEAKER_01
Although I think I kinda knew that I was gonna be doing computer science, but I didn t know the specific area.
1
SPEAKER_01
But I love teaching, I mean, I still love teaching.
1
SPEAKER_01
So I just, yeah, I just wanted to go abroad, get a PhD, come back, teach.
1
SPEAKER_00
Why computer science?
1
SPEAKER_00
Can we just linger on that?
1
SPEAKER_00
Because you re such an empathic person who cares about emotion, humans and so on.
1
SPEAKER_00
Aren t computers cold and emotionless?
1
SPEAKER_01
We re changing that.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I know, but isn t that the, or did you see computers as having the capability to actually connect with humans?
1
SPEAKER_01
I think that was my takeaway from my experience just growing up.
1
SPEAKER_01
Computers sit at the center of how we connect and communicate with one another, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
Or technology in general.
1
SPEAKER_01
I remember my first experience being away from my parents.
1
SPEAKER_01
We communicated with a fax machine.
1
SPEAKER_01
But thank goodness for the fax machine because we could send letters back and forth to each other.
1
SPEAKER_01
This was pre-emails and stuff.
1
SPEAKER_01
So I think technology can be not just transformative in terms of productivity, et cetera.
1
SPEAKER_01
It actually does change how we connect with one another.
1
SPEAKER_00
Can I just defend the fax machine?
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
There s something, like the haptic feel, because the email is all digital.
1
SPEAKER_00
There s something really nice.
1
SPEAKER_00
I still write letters to people.
1
SPEAKER_00
There s something nice about the haptic aspect of the fax machine, because you still have to press,
1
SPEAKER_00
you still have to do something in the physical world to make this thing a reality, the sense that somebody- Right, and then it comes out as a printout and you can actually touch it and read it.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, there s something lost when it s just an email.
1
SPEAKER_00
Obviously, I wonder how we can regain some of that in the digital world, which goes to the metaverse and all those kinds of things.
1
SPEAKER_00
We ll talk about it.
1
SPEAKER_00
Anyway, so- Actually, do you have a question on that one?
1
SPEAKER_01
Do you have photo albums anymore?
1
SPEAKER_01
Do you still print photos?
1
SPEAKER_00
No, no, but I m a minimalist.
1
SPEAKER_00
So one of the painful steps in my life was to scan all the photos and let go of them, and then let go of all my books.
1
SPEAKER_01
You let go of your books?
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, switched to Kindle, everything Kindle.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I thought, okay, think 30 years from now.
1
SPEAKER_00
nobody s gonna have books anymore.
1
SPEAKER_00
The technology of digital books is gonna get better and better and better.
1
SPEAKER_00
Are you really gonna be the guy that s still romanticizing physical books?
1
SPEAKER_00
Are you gonna be the old man on the porch who s like, kids, yes.
1
SPEAKER_00
So just get used to it.
1
SPEAKER_00
It still feels a little bit uncomfortable to read on a Kindle, but get used to it.
1
SPEAKER_00
I m trying to learn new programming languages always.
1
SPEAKER_00
With technology, you have to kind of challenge yourself to adapt to it.
1
SPEAKER_00
You know, I forced myself to use TikTok now.
1
SPEAKER_00
That thing doesn t need much forcing, it pulls you in like the worst kind of, or the best kind of drug.
1
SPEAKER_00
Anyway, yeah, so yeah, but I do love haptic things.
1
SPEAKER_00
There s a magic to the haptic.
1
SPEAKER_00
Even like touchscreens, it s tricky to get right, to get the experience of a button.
1
SPEAKER_00
Anyway, what were we talking about?
1
SPEAKER_00
So AI, so the journey, your whole plan was to come back to Cairo and teach, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
What did the plan go wrong?
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, exactly, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
And then I got to Cambridge and I fall in love with the idea of research, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
And kind of embarking on a path.
1
SPEAKER_01
Nobody s explored this path before.
1
SPEAKER_01
You re building stuff that nobody s built before and it s cheap.
2
SPEAKER_01
and it s challenging, and it s hard, and there s a lot of non-believers.
2
SPEAKER_01
I just totally love that.
2
SPEAKER_01
And at the end of my PhD, I think it s the meeting that changed the trajectory of my life.
2
SPEAKER_01
Professor Rosalind Picard, she runs the Affective Computing Group at the MIT Media Lab.
2
SPEAKER_01
I had read her book.
2
SPEAKER_01
I was following all her research.
2
SPEAKER_02
AKA Roz.
2
SPEAKER_02
Yes, AKA Roz.
2
SPEAKER_01
And she was giving a talk at a pattern recognition conference in Cambridge and she had a couple of hours to kill.
2
SPEAKER_01
So she emailed the lab and she said, you know, if any students want to meet with me, like just, you know, sign up here.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so I signed up for slot and I spent like the weeks leading up to it preparing for this meeting.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I want to show her a demo of my research and everything.
2
SPEAKER_01
And we met and we ended up hitting it off, like we totally clicked.
2
SPEAKER_01
And at the end of the meeting, she said, do you want to come work with me as a postdoc at MIT?
2
SPEAKER_01
And this is what I told her.
2
SPEAKER_01
I was like, OK, this would be a dream come true.
2
SPEAKER_01
But there s a husband waiting for me in Cairo.
2
SPEAKER_01
I have to go back.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
She said, it s fine.
2
SPEAKER_01
Just commute.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I literally started commuting between Cairo and Boston.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it was a long commute.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I did that like every few weeks.
2
SPEAKER_01
I would, you know, hop on a plane and go to Boston.
2
SPEAKER_01
But that changed the trajectory of my life.
2
SPEAKER_01
I kinda outgrew my dreams, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
I didn t wanna go back to Egypt anymore and be faculty, like that was no longer my dream.
2
SPEAKER_01
I had a new dream.
2
SPEAKER_02
What was it like to be at MIT?
2
SPEAKER_02
What was that culture shock?
2
SPEAKER_02
You mean America in general, but also, I mean Cambridge has its own culture, right?
2
SPEAKER_02
So what was MIT like?
2
SPEAKER_02
What was America like?
2
SPEAKER_01
I think, I wonder if that s similar to your experience at MIT.
2
SPEAKER_01
I was just,
2
SPEAKER_01
at the Media Lab in particular, I was just really impressed is not the right word.
2
SPEAKER_01
I didn t expect the openness to like innovation and the acceptance of taking a risk and failing.
2
SPEAKER_01
Like failure isn t really accepted back in Egypt, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
You don t want to fail.
2
SPEAKER_01
Like there s a fear of failure.
2
SPEAKER_01
which I think has been hardwired in my brain.
2
SPEAKER_01
But you get to MIT and it s okay to start things, and if they don t work out, it s okay, you pivot to another idea.
2
SPEAKER_01
And that kind of thinking was just very new to me.
2
SPEAKER_02
That s liberating.
2
SPEAKER_02
Well, Media Lab, for people who don t know, MIT Media Lab is its own beautiful thing because
2
SPEAKER_02
they, I think more than other places at MIT, reach for big ideas and like they try, I mean, I think, I mean, depending of course on who, but certainly with Rosalind, you try wild stuff, you try big things and crazy things and also try to take things to completion so you can demo them.
2
SPEAKER_02
So always have a demo.
2
SPEAKER_02
Like if you go, one of the sad things to me about robotics labs at MIT, and there s like over 30, I think,
2
SPEAKER_02
is like usually when you show up to a robotics lab, there s not a single working robot.
2
SPEAKER_02
They re all broken.
2
SPEAKER_02
All the robots are broken, which is like the normal state of things because you re working on them.
2
SPEAKER_02
But it would be nice if we lived in a world where robotics labs had some robots functioning.
2
SPEAKER_02
One of my favorite moments that just sticks with me, I visited Boston Dynamics and there was a,
2
SPEAKER_02
First of all, seeing so many spots, so many legged robots in one place, I m like, I m home.
2
SPEAKER_02
This is where I was built.
2
SPEAKER_02
The cool thing was just to see there was a random robot spot.
2
SPEAKER_02
was walking down the hall, was probably doing mapping, but it looked like he wasn t doing anything and he was wearing, he or she, I don t know, but it, well, I like, in my mind, they re people, they have a backstory, but this one in particular definitely has a backstory because he was wearing a cowboy hat.
2
SPEAKER_02
So I just saw a spa robot with a cowboy hat walking down the hall.
2
SPEAKER_02
And there was just this feeling like there s a life, like he has a life.
2
SPEAKER_02
He probably has to commute back to his family at night.
2
SPEAKER_02
Like there s a there s a feeling like there s life instilled in this robot.
2
SPEAKER_02
And that s magical.
2
SPEAKER_02
I don t know, there was kind of inspiring to see.
2
SPEAKER_01
Did it say hello to did he say hello to you?
2
SPEAKER_02
No, it s very there s a focused nature to the robot.
2
SPEAKER_02
No, no.
2
SPEAKER_02
Listen, I love competence and focus and great.
2
SPEAKER_02
Like he was not going to get distracted by the the shallowness of small talk.
2
SPEAKER_02
There s a job to be done.
2
SPEAKER_02
And he was doing it.
2
SPEAKER_02
So anyway, the fact that it was working is a beautiful thing.
2
SPEAKER_02
And I think Media Lab really prides itself on trying to always have a thing that s working.
2
SPEAKER_02
It could show off.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yes, we used to call it demo or die.
2
SPEAKER_01
You could not show up with PowerPoint or something.
2
SPEAKER_01
You actually had to have it working.
2
SPEAKER_01
You know what?
2
SPEAKER_01
My son, who is now 13, I don t know if this is still his lifelong goal or not, but when he was a little younger, his dream is to build an island that s just inhabited by robots.
2
SPEAKER_01
Like, no humans.
2
SPEAKER_01
He just wants all these robots to be connecting and having fun.
2
SPEAKER_02
So there you go.
2
SPEAKER_02
Does he have an idea of which robots he loves most?
2
SPEAKER_02
Is it Roomba-like robots?
2
SPEAKER_02
Is it humanoid robots?
2
SPEAKER_02
Robot dogs?
2
SPEAKER_02
Or it s not clear yet.
2
SPEAKER_01
We used to have a Jibo, which was one of the MIT Media Lab spin-outs.
2
SPEAKER_01
And he used to love Jibo.
2
SPEAKER_02
The thing with the giant head.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
2
SPEAKER_02
That spins.
2
SPEAKER_01
Right, exactly.
2
SPEAKER_02
It can rotate, and it s an eye.
2
SPEAKER_02
Well, like, not glowing, like.
2
SPEAKER_01
Right, right, right, right, exactly.
2
SPEAKER_02
It s like HAL 9000, but the friendly version.
2
SPEAKER_01
He loved that, and then he just loves, yeah, he just, I think he loves all forms of robots, actually.
2
SPEAKER_02
So embodied intelligence.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
2
SPEAKER_02
I like, I personally like legged robots, especially.
2
SPEAKER_02
Anything that can wiggle its butt.
2
SPEAKER_02
No, that s not the definition of what I love, but that s just technically what I ve been working on recently.
2
SPEAKER_02
So I have a bunch of legged robots now in Austin and I ve been doing, I ve been trying to have them communicate affection with their body in different ways, just for art, for art, really.
2
SPEAKER_02
Because I love the idea of walking around with the robots
2
SPEAKER_02
like as you would with a dog.
2
SPEAKER_02
I think it s inspiring to a lot of people, especially young people.
2
SPEAKER_02
Like kids love.
2
SPEAKER_01
Kids love it.
2
SPEAKER_02
Parents, like adults are scared of robots, but kids don t have this kind of weird construction of the world that s full of evil.
2
SPEAKER_02
They love cool things.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
I remember when Adam was in first grade, so he must have been like seven or so, I went in to his class with a whole bunch of robots and like the emotion AI demo and I asked the kids, I was like, would you kids want to have a robot?
2
SPEAKER_01
you know, robot friend or robot companion, everybody said yes.
2
SPEAKER_01
And they wanted it for all sorts of things, like to help them with their math homework and to like be a friend.
2
SPEAKER_01
So there s, it just struck me how there was no fear of robots.
2
SPEAKER_01
A lot of adults have that, like us versus them.
2
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, none of that.
2
SPEAKER_02
Of course, you want to be very careful because you still have to look at the lessons of history and how robots can be used by the power centers of the world to abuse your rights and all that kind of stuff.
2
SPEAKER_02
But mostly it s good to enter anything new with an excitement and optimism.
2
SPEAKER_02
Speaking of Roz, what have you learned about science and life from Rosalind Picard?
2
SPEAKER_01
Oh my God, I ve learned so many things about life from Roz.
2
SPEAKER_01
I think the thing I learned the most is perseverance.
2
SPEAKER_01
When I first met Roz, and she invited me to be her post-doc, we applied for a grant to the National Science Foundation to apply some of our research to autism, and we got back, we were rejected.
2
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, and the reasoning was- The first time you were rejected for fun, yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, and I basically, I just took the rejection to mean, okay, we re rejected, it s done, end of story, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
And Roz was like,
2
SPEAKER_01
It s great news.
2
SPEAKER_01
They love the idea.
2
SPEAKER_01
They just don t think we can do it.
2
SPEAKER_01
So let s build it, show them, and then reapply.
2
SPEAKER_01
And it was that, oh my God, that story totally stuck with me.
2
SPEAKER_01
And she s like that in every aspect of her life.
2
SPEAKER_01
She just does not take no for an answer.
2
SPEAKER_02
Reframe all negative feedback.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s a challenge.
2
SPEAKER_02
It s a challenge.
2
SPEAKER_02
Yes, they like this.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was a riot.
2
SPEAKER_02
What else about science in general, about how you see computers and also business and just everything about the world.
2
SPEAKER_02
She s a very powerful, brilliant woman like yourself, so is there some aspect of that too?
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I think Roz is actually also very faith-driven.
2
SPEAKER_01
She has this, like, deep belief and conviction, yeah, in the good in the world and humanity.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I think that was—meeting her and her family was definitely, like, a defining moment for me because that was when I was like, wow, like, you can be of a different background and religion and whatever, and you can still have the same core values.
2
SPEAKER_01
So that was, yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
I m grateful to her.
2
SPEAKER_01
Roz, if you re listening, thank you.
2
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, she s great.
2
SPEAKER_02
She s been on this podcast before.
2
SPEAKER_02
I hope she ll be on.
2
SPEAKER_02
I m sure she ll be on again.
2
SPEAKER_02
You were the founder and CEO of Affectiva, which is a big company that was acquired by another big company, SmartEye.
2
SPEAKER_02
And you re now the deputy CEO of SmartEye.
2
SPEAKER_02
So you re a powerful leader.
2
SPEAKER_02
You re brilliant.
2
SPEAKER_02
You re a brilliant scientist.
2
SPEAKER_02
A lot of people are inspired by you.
2
SPEAKER_02
What advice would you give, especially to young women, but people in general who dream of becoming powerful leaders like yourself in a world where perhaps
2
SPEAKER_02
in a world that perhaps doesn t give them a clear, easy path to do so, whether we re talking about Egypt or elsewhere.
2
SPEAKER_01
You know, hearing you kind of describe me that way kind of encapsulates, I think, what I think is the biggest challenge of all, which is believing in yourself, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
I have had to grapple with this, what I call now the Debbie Downer voice in my head.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s just shattering all the time.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s basically saying, oh, no, no, no, no, you can t do this.
2
SPEAKER_01
You re not going to raise money.
2
SPEAKER_01
You can t start a company.
2
SPEAKER_01
What business do you have starting a company or running a company or selling a company?
2
SPEAKER_01
You name it.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I think my biggest advice to not just women, but people who have, who are taking a new path and, you know, they re not sure, is to not let yourself and let your thoughts be the biggest obstacle in your way.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I ve had to like really work on myself to not be my own biggest obstacle.
2
SPEAKER_02
So you got that negative voice.
2
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
So is that- Am I the only one?
2
SPEAKER_01
I don t think I m the only one.
2
SPEAKER_02
No, I have that negative voice.
2
SPEAKER_02
I m not exactly sure if it s a bad thing or a good thing.
2
SPEAKER_02
I ve been really torn about it because it s been a lifelong companion.
2
SPEAKER_02
So it s hard to know.
2
SPEAKER_02
It s kind of, it drives productivity and progress, but it can hold you back from taking big leaps.
2
SPEAKER_02
I think the best I can say is probably you have to somehow be able to control it.
2
SPEAKER_02
So turn it off when it s not useful and turn it on when it s useful.
2
SPEAKER_02
Like I have from almost like a third person perspective.
2
SPEAKER_01
Right, somebody is sitting there like.
2
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, like, because it is useful to, to be critical.
2
SPEAKER_02
Like after, I just gave a talk yesterday at MIT, and I was just, you know, there s so much love.
2
SPEAKER_02
And it was such an incredible experience.
2
SPEAKER_02
So many amazing people I got a chance to talk to, but
2
SPEAKER_02
You know, afterwards, when I when I went home, I just took this long walk is mostly just negative thoughts about me.
2
SPEAKER_02
I don t like one basic stuff like I don t deserve any of it.
2
SPEAKER_02
And second is like,
2
SPEAKER_02
Like, why did you?
2
SPEAKER_02
That was so dumb.
2
SPEAKER_02
You said this, that s so dumb.
2
SPEAKER_02
Like, you should have prepared that better.
2
SPEAKER_02
Why did you say this?
2
SPEAKER_02
But I think it s good to hear that voice out.
2
SPEAKER_02
All right.
2
SPEAKER_02
And like, sit in that.
2
SPEAKER_02
And ultimately, I think you grow from that.
2
SPEAKER_02
Now, when you re making really big decisions about funding,
2
SPEAKER_02
or starting a company or taking a leap to go to the UK or take a leap to go to America to work in Media Lab.
2
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, there s a that s, you should be able to shut that off then because you should have like this weird confidence, almost like faith that you said before that everything s gonna work out.
2
SPEAKER_02
So take the leap of faith.
2
SPEAKER_01
Take the leap of faith.
2
SPEAKER_02
despite all the negativity.
2
SPEAKER_02
I mean, there s some of that.
2
SPEAKER_02
You actually tweeted a really nice.
2
SPEAKER_02
a tweet thread, it says, quote, a year ago, a friend recommended I do daily affirmations, and I was skeptical.
2
SPEAKER_02
But I was going through major transitions in my life, so I gave it a shot, and it set me on a journey of self-acceptance and self-love.
2
SPEAKER_02
So what was that like?
2
SPEAKER_02
Can you maybe talk through this idea of affirmations and how that helped you?
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, because really, I m just like me, I m a kind, I like to think of myself as a kind person in general, but I m kind of mean to myself sometimes.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so I ve been doing journaling for almost 10 years now.
2
SPEAKER_01
I use an app called Day One, and it s awesome, I just journal, and I use it as an opportunity to almost have a conversation with the Debbie Downer voice in my, it s like a rebuttal, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
Like Debbie Downer says, oh my God, you won t be able to raise this round of funding.
2
SPEAKER_00
Okay, let s talk about it.
2
SPEAKER_00
I have a track record of doing X, Y, and Z. I think I can do this.
2
SPEAKER_01
And it s literally like, so I wouldn t, I don t know that I can shut off the voice, but I can have a conversation with it and it just, and I bring data to the table, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
Nice.
2
SPEAKER_01
So that was the journaling part, which I found very helpful.
2
SPEAKER_01
But the affirmation took it to a whole next level, and I just love it.
2
SPEAKER_01
I m a year into doing this.
2
SPEAKER_01
And you literally wake up in the morning, and the first thing you do, I meditate first, and then I write my affirmations.
2
SPEAKER_01
And it s the energy I want to put out in the world that hopefully will come right back to me.
2
SPEAKER_01
I will say, I always start with, my smile lights up the whole world.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I kid you not, people in the street will stop me and say, oh my God, we love your smile.
2
SPEAKER_01
I m like, yes.
2
SPEAKER_01
So my affirmations will change depending on what s happening these days.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s funny, I know, don t judge, don t judge.
2
SPEAKER_02
No, laughter s not judgment, it s just awesome.
2
SPEAKER_02
I mean, it s true, but you re saying affirmations somehow help
2
SPEAKER_02
kind of, what is it, they do work to like remind you of the kind of person you are and the kind of person you wanna be, which actually may be inverse order, the kind of person you wanna be and that helps you become the kind of person you actually are.
2
SPEAKER_01
It brings intentionality to like,
2
SPEAKER_01
what you re doing, right?
2
SPEAKER_02
And so- By the way, I was laughing because my affirmations, which I also do, are the opposite.
2
SPEAKER_01
Oh, you do?
2
SPEAKER_01
Oh, what do you do?
2
SPEAKER_02
I don t have a, my smile lights up the world.
2
SPEAKER_02
Maybe I should add that because I have just, oh boy.
2
SPEAKER_02
It s much more stoic about focus, about this kind of stuff.
2
SPEAKER_02
But the joy, the emotion that you re just in that little affirmation is beautiful.
2
SPEAKER_02
So maybe I should add that.
2
SPEAKER_01
I have some like focus stuff, but that s usually- But that s a cool start.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s after all the like smiling and I m playful and joyful and all that, and then it s like, okay, I kick butt.
2
SPEAKER_02
Let s get shit done.
2
SPEAKER_02
Right, exactly.
2
SPEAKER_02
That s the get shit done affirmation.
2
SPEAKER_02
Okay, cool.
2
SPEAKER_02
So like what else is on there?
2
SPEAKER_01
What else is on there?
2
SPEAKER_01
Well, I have, I m a magnet for all sorts of things.
2
SPEAKER_01
So I m an amazing people magnet.
2
SPEAKER_01
I attract like awesome people into my universe.
2
SPEAKER_02
So that s an actual affirmation.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
3
SPEAKER_00
That s great.
3
SPEAKER_00
And that somehow manifests itself into working.
3
SPEAKER_01
I think so.
3
SPEAKER_00
Can you speak to why it feels good to do the affirmations?
3
SPEAKER_01
I honestly think it just...
3
SPEAKER_01
grounds the day.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then it allows me to, instead of just being pulled back and forth throughout the day, it just grounds me.
3
SPEAKER_01
I m like, okay, this thing happened.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s not exactly what I wanted it to be, but I m patient.
3
SPEAKER_01
I trust that the universe will do amazing things for me, which is one of my other consistent affirmations.
3
SPEAKER_01
Or I m an amazing mom, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
And so I can grapple with all the feelings of mom guilt that I have all the time.
3
SPEAKER_01
Or here s another one.
3
SPEAKER_01
I m a love magnet.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I literally say, I will kind of picture the person that I d love to end up with, and I write it all down.
3
SPEAKER_01
And it hasn t happened yet, but it— What are you picturing?
3
SPEAKER_00
This is Brad Pitt.
3
SPEAKER_00
Cause that s what I picture.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s what you picture?
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
Running, holding hands, running together.
3
SPEAKER_00
No, more like fight club that the fight club, Brad Pitt, where he s like standing.
3
SPEAKER_00
All right.
3
SPEAKER_00
People will know.
3
SPEAKER_00
Anyway, I m sorry.
3
SPEAKER_00
I ll get off on that.
3
SPEAKER_00
Do you have a, like when you re thinking about the, being a love magnet in that way, are you picturing specific people or is this almost like, in the space of like energy?
3
SPEAKER_01
Right, it s somebody who is smart and well-accomplished and successful in their life, but they re generous, and they re well-traveled, and they wanna travel the world.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s things like that.
3
SPEAKER_01
I m like, their head over heels into me.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s like, I know, it sounds super silly, but it s literally what I write.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I believe it ll happen one day.
3
SPEAKER_00
Oh, you actually write, so you don t say it out loud?
3
SPEAKER_01
No, I write it.
3
SPEAKER_01
I write all my affirmations.
3
SPEAKER_00
I do the opposite, I say it out loud.
3
SPEAKER_01
Oh, you say it out loud?
3
SPEAKER_01
Interesting.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, if I m alone, I ll say it out loud, yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
Interesting, I should try that.
3
SPEAKER_00
I think it s which, what feels more powerful to you, to me, more powerful, saying stuff feels more powerful.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
Writing is, writing feels like I m losing
3
SPEAKER_00
losing the words, like losing the power of the words, maybe, because I write slow.
3
SPEAKER_00
Do you handwrite?
3
SPEAKER_01
No, I type.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s on this app.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s day one, basically, and I just, I can, the best thing about it is I can look back.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
And see, like, a year ago, what was I affirming, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
Oh, so it changes over time.
3
SPEAKER_01
It hasn t, like, changed a lot, but the focus kind of changes over time.
3
SPEAKER_00
I got it.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I say the same exact thing over and over and over.
3
SPEAKER_00
Oh, you do?
3
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
3
SPEAKER_00
There s a comfort in the sameness of it.
3
SPEAKER_00
Actually, let me jump around, because let me ask you about, because all this talk about Brad Pitt, or maybe it s just going on inside my head.
3
SPEAKER_00
Let me ask you about dating in general.
3
SPEAKER_00
You tweeted, are you based in Boston and single?
3
SPEAKER_00
And then you pointed to a startup, Singles Night, sponsored by Smile Dating App.
3
SPEAKER_00
I mean, this is jumping around a little bit, but since you mentioned, can AI help solve this dating love problem?
3
SPEAKER_00
What do you think?
3
SPEAKER_00
This problem of connection that is part of the human condition.
3
SPEAKER_00
Can AI help that?
3
SPEAKER_00
You yourself are in the search affirming.
3
SPEAKER_01
Maybe that s what I should affirm, like build an AI.
3
SPEAKER_00
Build an AI that finds love.
3
SPEAKER_01
I think there must be a science behind that first moment you meet a person and you either have chemistry or you don t, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
I guess that was the question I was asking.
3
SPEAKER_00
You put it brilliantly.
3
SPEAKER_00
Is that a science or an art?
3
SPEAKER_01
I think there s actual chemicals that get exchanged when two people meet.
3
SPEAKER_01
I don t know about that.
3
SPEAKER_01
But okay, right.
3
SPEAKER_00
I like how you re changing, yeah, changing your mind as we re describing it.
3
SPEAKER_00
But it feels that way.
3
SPEAKER_00
But what science shows us is sometimes we can explain with rigor the things that feel like magic.
3
SPEAKER_00
So maybe we can remove all the magic.
3
SPEAKER_00
Maybe it s like, I honestly think, like I said, like Goodreads should be a dating app, which like books.
3
SPEAKER_00
I wonder if you look at just like books or content you ve consumed.
3
SPEAKER_00
I mean, that s essentially what YouTube does when it does a recommendation.
3
SPEAKER_00
If you just look at your footprint of content consumed,
3
SPEAKER_00
if there s an overlap, but maybe interesting difference with an overlap, I m sure this is a machine learning problem that s solvable.
3
SPEAKER_00
This person is very likely to be, not only there to be chemistry in the short term, but a good lifelong partner to grow together.
3
SPEAKER_00
I bet you it s a good machine learning problem.
3
SPEAKER_00
We just need the data.
3
SPEAKER_01
Let s do it.
3
SPEAKER_01
Well, actually, I do think there s so much data about each of us that there ought to be a machine learning algorithm that can ingest all this data and basically say, I think the following 10 people would be interesting connections for you, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
And so Smile Dating App kind of took one particular angle, which is humor.
3
SPEAKER_01
It matches people based on their humor styles, which is one of the main ingredients of a successful relationship.
3
SPEAKER_01
Like if you meet somebody and they can make you laugh, like that s a good thing.
3
SPEAKER_01
And if you develop like internal jokes, like inside jokes, and you re bantering, like that s fun.
3
SPEAKER_01
So I think.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, no, definitely, definitely.
3
SPEAKER_00
But yeah, that s the,
3
SPEAKER_00
the number and the rate of inside joke generation, you could probably measure that and then optimize it over the first few days.
3
SPEAKER_01
You can see it.
3
SPEAKER_00
We re just turning this into a machine learning problem, I love it.
3
SPEAKER_00
But for somebody like you who s exceptionally successful and busy, is there, is there a way
3
SPEAKER_00
Is there signs to that aspect of dating?
3
SPEAKER_00
Is it tricky?
3
SPEAKER_00
Is there advice you can give?
3
SPEAKER_01
Oh my God, I d give the worst advice.
3
SPEAKER_01
Well, I can tell you I have a spreadsheet.
3
SPEAKER_00
A spreadsheet, that s great.
3
SPEAKER_00
Is that a good or a bad thing?
3
SPEAKER_00
Do you regret the spreadsheet?
3
SPEAKER_01
Well, I don t know.
3
SPEAKER_00
What s the name of the spreadsheet?
3
SPEAKER_00
Is it love?
3
SPEAKER_01
It s the dating tracker or something.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s very like... Love tracker.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
And there s a rating system, I m sure.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, there s like weights and stuff.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s too close to home.
3
SPEAKER_01
Oh, is it?
3
SPEAKER_01
Do you also have a spreadsheet?
3
SPEAKER_00
Well, I don t have a spreadsheet, but I would, now that you say it, it seems like a good idea.
3
SPEAKER_01
Oh, no.
3
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
3
SPEAKER_00
Turning into data.
3
SPEAKER_00
I do wish that somebody else had a spreadsheet about me.
3
SPEAKER_00
Hmm.
3
SPEAKER_00
If, you know, if it was like,
3
SPEAKER_00
like I said, like you said, convert, collect a lot of data about us in a way that s privacy-preserving, that I own the data, I can control it, and then use that data to find, I mean, not just romantic love, but collaborators, friends, all that kind of stuff.
3
SPEAKER_00
It seems like the data is there.
3
SPEAKER_00
That s the problem social networks are trying to solve, but I think they re doing a really poor job.
3
SPEAKER_00
Even Facebook tried to get into a dating app business.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I think there s so many components to running a successful company that connects human beings.
3
SPEAKER_00
And part of that is having engineers that care about the human side, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
As you know extremely well, it s not easy to find those.
3
SPEAKER_00
But you also don t want just people that care about the human, they also have to be good engineers.
3
SPEAKER_00
So it s like you have to find this beautiful mix.
3
SPEAKER_00
And for some reason, just empirically speaking,
3
SPEAKER_00
People have not done a good job of that, of building companies like that.
3
SPEAKER_00
It must mean that it s a difficult problem to solve.
3
SPEAKER_00
Dating apps, it seems difficult.
3
SPEAKER_00
Okay, Cupid, Tinder, all those kind of stuff.
3
SPEAKER_00
They seem to find, of course they work, but they seem to find
3
SPEAKER_00
to not work as well as I would imagine is possible.
3
SPEAKER_00
With data, wouldn t you be able to find better human connection?
3
SPEAKER_00
It s like arrange marriages on steroids, essentially.
3
SPEAKER_00
Arranged by a machine learning algorithm.
3
SPEAKER_01
Arranged by a machine learning algorithm, but not a superficial one.
3
SPEAKER_01
I think a lot of the dating apps
3
SPEAKER_01
out there are just so superficial.
3
SPEAKER_01
They re just matching on high-level criteria that aren t ingredients for a successful partnership.
3
SPEAKER_01
But you know what s missing, though, too?
3
SPEAKER_01
I don t know how to fix that.
3
SPEAKER_01
The serendipity piece of it.
3
SPEAKER_01
How do you engineer serendipity?
3
SPEAKER_01
This random chance encounter, and then you fall in love with the person.
3
SPEAKER_01
I don t know how a dating app can do that.
3
SPEAKER_01
There has to be a little bit of randomness.
3
SPEAKER_01
every 10th match is just a, you know, yeah, somebody that the algorithm wouldn t have necessarily recommended, but it allows for a little bit of
3
SPEAKER_00
Well, it can also, you know, it can also trick you into thinking it s not gonna be by like somehow showing you a tweet of a person that he thinks you ll match well with, but do it accidentally as part of another search.
3
SPEAKER_00
And like, you just notice it, like, and then you get, you go down a rabbit hole and you connect them outside the app to like, you connect with this person outside the app somehow.
3
SPEAKER_00
So it s just, it creates that moment of meeting.
3
SPEAKER_00
Of course, you have to think of, from an app perspective, how you can turn that into a business.
3
SPEAKER_00
But I think ultimately, a business that helps people find love in any way, like that s what Apple was about, create products that people love, that s beautiful.
3
SPEAKER_00
You gotta make money somehow.
3
SPEAKER_00
If you help people fall in love personally with a product, find self-love or love another human being, you re gonna make money.
3
SPEAKER_00
You re gonna figure out a way to make money.
3
SPEAKER_00
I just feel like the dating apps often will optimize for something else than love.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s the same with social networks.
3
SPEAKER_00
They optimize for engagement as opposed to like a deep, meaningful connection that s ultimately grounded in like personal growth, you as a human being growing and all that kind of stuff.
3
SPEAKER_00
Let me do like a pivot to a dark topic, which you opened the book with.
3
SPEAKER_00
A story, because I d like to talk to you about just
3
SPEAKER_00
emotion and artificial intelligence, and I think this is a good story to start to think about emotional intelligence.
3
SPEAKER_00
You open the book with a story of a Central Florida man, Jamel Dunn, who was drowning and drowned while five teenagers watched and laughed, saying things like, you re gonna die, and when Jamel disappeared below the surface of the water, one of them said, he just died, and the others laughed.
3
SPEAKER_00
What is this incident?
3
SPEAKER_00
teach you about human nature and the response to it, perhaps.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, I think this is a really, really, really sad story and it highlights what I believe is a, it s a real problem in our world today.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s an empathy crisis.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, we re living through an empathy crisis.
3
SPEAKER_00
Empathy crisis, yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I mean, we ve talked about this throughout our conversation, we dehumanize each other.
3
SPEAKER_01
And unfortunately, yes, technology is bringing us together, but in a way it s just dehumanize, it s creating this like
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, dehumanizing of the other.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I think that s a huge problem.
3
SPEAKER_01
The good news is I think the solution could be technology-based.
3
SPEAKER_01
Like, I think if we rethink the way we design and deploy our technologies, we can solve parts of this problem.
3
SPEAKER_01
But I worry about it.
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, even with my son, a lot of his interactions are
3
SPEAKER_01
computer mediated.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I just question what that s doing to his empathy skills and his ability to really connect with people, so.
3
SPEAKER_00
You think it s not possible to form empathy through the digital medium?
3
SPEAKER_01
I think it is.
3
SPEAKER_01
But we have to be thoughtful about, because the way we engage face-to-face, which is what we re doing right now, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
There s the nonverbal signals, which are a majority of how we communicate.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s like 90% of how we communicate is your facial expressions.
3
SPEAKER_01
You know, I m saying something and you re nodding your head now, and that creates a feedback loop.
3
SPEAKER_01
And if you break that.
3
SPEAKER_00
And now I have anxiety about it.
3
SPEAKER_01
Poor Lex.
3
SPEAKER_00
Oh boy, vicious cycle.
3
SPEAKER_01
I am not scrutinizing your facial expressions during this interview, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
I am, I am.
3
SPEAKER_00
Look normal, look human.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
Nod head.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, nod head.
3
SPEAKER_00
In agreement.
3
SPEAKER_01
If Rana says yes, then nod head else.
3
SPEAKER_00
Don t do it too much because it might be at the wrong time and then it ll send the wrong signal.
3
SPEAKER_00
Oh God.
3
SPEAKER_00
And make eye contact sometimes because humans appreciate that.
3
SPEAKER_00
All right, anyway.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, but something about the, especially when you say mean things in person, you get to see the pain of the other person.
3
SPEAKER_01
Exactly, but if you re tweeting it at a person and you have no idea how it s gonna land, you re more likely to do that on social media than you are in face-to-face conversations, so.
3
SPEAKER_00
I mean, what do you think is more important?
3
SPEAKER_00
EQ or IQ?
3
SPEAKER_00
EQ being emotional intelligence.
3
SPEAKER_00
In terms of in what makes us human.
3
SPEAKER_01
I think emotional intelligence is what makes us human.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s how we connect with one another.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s how we build trust.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s how we make decisions, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
Like your emotions drive kind of what you had for breakfast, but also where you decide to live and what you want to do for the rest of your life.
3
SPEAKER_01
So I think emotions are underrated.
3
SPEAKER_00
But so emotional intelligence isn t just about the effective expression of your own emotions.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s about a sensitivity and empathy to other people s emotions and that sort of being able to effectively engage in the dance of emotions with other people.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I like that explanation.
3
SPEAKER_01
I like that kind of.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, thinking about it as a dance, because it is really about that.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s about sensing what state the other person s in and using that information to decide on how you re going to react.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I think it can be very powerful, like people who are the best, most persuasive leaders in the world tap into, you know, if you have higher EQ, you re more likely to be able to motivate people to change their behaviors.
3
SPEAKER_01
So it can be very powerful.
3
SPEAKER_00
On a more kind of technical, maybe philosophical level, you ve written that emotion is universal.
3
SPEAKER_00
It seems that sort of like Chomsky says, language is universal.
3
SPEAKER_00
There s a bunch of other stuff like cognition, consciousness.
3
SPEAKER_00
It seems a lot of us have these aspects.
3
SPEAKER_00
So the human mind generates all this.
3
SPEAKER_00
So what do you think is the, they all seem to be like echoes of the same thing.
3
SPEAKER_00
What do you think emotion is exactly?
3
SPEAKER_00
Like how deep does it run?
3
SPEAKER_00
Is it a surface level thing that we display to each other?
3
SPEAKER_00
Is it just another form of language or something deep within?
3
SPEAKER_01
I think it s really deep.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s how, you know, we started with memory.
3
SPEAKER_01
I think emotions play a really important role.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, emotions play a very important role in how we encode memories, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
Our memories are often encoded, almost indexed by emotions.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it s at the core of how our decision-making engine is also heavily influenced by our emotions.
3
SPEAKER_00
So emotions is part of cognition.
3
SPEAKER_00
Totally.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s intermixing to the whole thing.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yes, absolutely.
3
SPEAKER_01
And in fact, when you take it away, people are unable to make decisions.
3
SPEAKER_01
They re really paralyzed.
3
SPEAKER_01
They can t go about their daily or their personal or professional lives.
3
SPEAKER_00
It does seem like there s probably some interesting
3
SPEAKER_00
interweaving of emotion and consciousness.
3
SPEAKER_00
I wonder if it s possible to have, like if they re next door neighbors somehow, or if they re actually flatmates.
3
SPEAKER_00
It feels like the hard problem of consciousness where it feels like something to experience the thing.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like,
3
SPEAKER_00
Red feels like red, and it s, you know, when you eat a mango, it s sweet, the taste, the sweetness, that it feels like something to experience that sweetness, that whatever
4
SPEAKER_00
whatever generates emotions.
4
SPEAKER_00
But then like, see, I feel like emotion is part of communication.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s very much about communication.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then that means it s also deeply connected to language.
4
SPEAKER_00
But then probably human intelligence is deeply connected to the collective intelligence between humans.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s not just a standalone thing.
4
SPEAKER_00
So the whole thing is really connected.
4
SPEAKER_00
So emotion is connected to language, language is connected to intelligence, and then intelligence is connected to consciousness, and consciousness is connected to emotion.
4
SPEAKER_00
The whole thing is a beautiful mess.
4
SPEAKER_02
Can I comment on the emotions being a communication mechanism?
4
SPEAKER_02
Because I think there are two facets of our emotional experiences.
4
SPEAKER_02
One is communication, right?
4
SPEAKER_02
Like we use emotions, for example, facial expressions or other nonverbal cues to connect with other human beings and with other beings in the world, right?
4
SPEAKER_02
But even if
4
SPEAKER_02
it s not a communication context.
4
SPEAKER_02
We still experience emotions and we still process emotions and we still leverage emotions to make decisions and to learn and, you know, to experience life.
4
SPEAKER_02
It isn t always just about communication.
4
SPEAKER_02
And we learned that very early on in our work at Affectiva.
4
SPEAKER_02
One of the very first applications we brought to market was understanding how people respond to content, right?
4
SPEAKER_02
So if they re watching this video of ours, are they interested?
4
SPEAKER_02
Are they inspired?
4
SPEAKER_02
Are they bored to death?
4
SPEAKER_02
And so we watched their facial expressions.
4
SPEAKER_02
And we weren t sure if people would express any emotions if they were sitting alone.
4
SPEAKER_02
Like if you re in your bed at night,
4
SPEAKER_02
watching a Netflix TV series, would we still see any emotions on your face? 
4
SPEAKER_02
And we were surprised that, yes, people still emote, even if they re alone, even if you re in your car driving around, you re singing along a song and you re joyful.
4
SPEAKER_02
We ll see these expressions.
4
SPEAKER_02
So it s not just about communicating with another person.
4
SPEAKER_02
It sometimes really isn t just about experiencing the world.
4
SPEAKER_00
First of all, I wonder if some of that is because we develop our intelligence and our emotional intelligence by communicating with other humans, and so when other humans disappear from the picture, we re still kind of a virtual human.
4
SPEAKER_02
The code still runs, basically.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, the code still runs, but you re also kind of, you re still, there s like virtual humans.
4
SPEAKER_00
You don t have to think of it that way, but there s a kind of,
4
SPEAKER_00
when you re like chuckling.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, like you re kind of chuckling to a virtual human.
4
SPEAKER_00
I mean, it s possible that the code has to have another human in it.
4
SPEAKER_00
there, because if you just grew up alone, I wonder if emotion would still be there in this visual form.
4
SPEAKER_00
So yeah, I wonder, but anyway, what can you tell from the human face about what s going on inside?
4
SPEAKER_00
So that s the problem that Affectiva first tackled, which is,
4
SPEAKER_00
using computer vision, using machine learning to try to detect stuff about the human face, as many things as possible, and convert them into a prediction of categories of emotion, anger, happiness, all that kind of stuff.
4
SPEAKER_00
How hard is that problem?
4
SPEAKER_02
It s extremely hard.
4
SPEAKER_02
It s very, very hard because there is no one-to-one mapping between a facial expression and your internal state.
4
SPEAKER_02
There just isn t.
4
SPEAKER_02
There s this oversimplification of the problem where it s something like, if you are smiling, then you re happy.
4
SPEAKER_02
If you do a brow furrow, then you re angry.
4
SPEAKER_02
If you do an eyebrow raise, then you re surprised.
4
SPEAKER_02
Just think about it for a moment.
4
SPEAKER_02
You could be smiling for a whole host of reasons.
4
SPEAKER_02
You could also be happy and not be smiling, right?
4
SPEAKER_02
You could furrow your eyebrows because you re angry or you re confused about something or you re constipated.
4
SPEAKER_02
So I think this oversimplistic approach to inferring emotion from a facial expression is really dangerous.
4
SPEAKER_02
The solution is to incorporate as many contextual signals as you can, right?
4
SPEAKER_02
So if, for example, I m driving a car and you can see me like nodding my head and my eyes are closed and the blinking rate is changing, I m probably falling asleep at the wheel, right?
4
SPEAKER_02
It doesn t, because you know the context, you understand what the person s doing.
4
SPEAKER_02
So I think, or add additional channels like voice or gestures or even physiological sensors.
4
SPEAKER_02
But I think it s very dangerous to just take this over simplistic approach of, yeah, smile equals happy.
4
SPEAKER_00
And- If you re able to, in a high resolution way, specify the context, there s certain things that are gonna be somewhat reliable signals of something like drowsiness or happiness or stuff like that.
4
SPEAKER_00
I mean, when people are watching Netflix content, that problem, that s a really compelling idea that you can kind of, at least in aggregate, highlight, like which part was boring, which part was exciting.
4
SPEAKER_00
How hard was that problem?
4
SPEAKER_02
That was on the scale of like difficulty.
4
SPEAKER_02
I think that s one of the easier problems to solve because it s a relatively constrained environment.
4
SPEAKER_02
You have somebody sitting in front of, initially we started with like a device in front of you, like a laptop, and then we graduated to doing this on a mobile phone, which is a lot harder just because of, you know, from a computer vision perspective.
4
SPEAKER_02
the profile view of the face can be a lot more challenging.
4
SPEAKER_02
We have to figure out lighting conditions because usually people are watching content literally in their bedrooms at night.
4
SPEAKER_02
Lights are dimmed.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I mean, if you re standing, it s probably gonna be the looking up.
4
SPEAKER_02
The nostril view.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and nobody looks good at, I ve seen data sets from that perspective, it s like, ugh, this is not a good look for anyone.
4
SPEAKER_00
Or if you re laying in bed at night, what is it, side view or something?
4
SPEAKER_00
And half your face is like on a pillow.
4
SPEAKER_00
Actually, I would love to have data about how people watch stuff in bed at night.
4
SPEAKER_00
Do they prop there?
4
SPEAKER_00
Is it a pillow?
4
SPEAKER_00
I m sure there s a lot of interesting dynamics there.
4
SPEAKER_02
from a health and well-being perspective, right?
4
SPEAKER_02
It s like, oh, you re hurting your neck.
4
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
4
SPEAKER_00
But also, yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
Once you have that data, you can start making all kinds of inference about health and stuff like that.
4
SPEAKER_02
Interesting.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, there s an interesting thing when I was at Google that we were, it s called active authentication, where you want to be able to unlock your phone without using a password.
4
SPEAKER_00
So it would face, but also other stuff, like the way you take a phone out of the pocket.
4
SPEAKER_00
So that kind of data to use the multimodal with machine learning to be able to identify that it s you or likely to be you, likely not to be you.
4
SPEAKER_00
That allows you to not always have to enter the password.
4
SPEAKER_00
That was the idea.
4
SPEAKER_00
But the funny thing about that is, I just wanna tell a small anecdote is, because it was all male engineers.
4
SPEAKER_00
Except, so there s, my boss is, our boss, who s still one of my favorite humans, was a woman, Regina Dugan.
4
SPEAKER_02
Oh my God, I love her.
4
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, she s the best.
4
SPEAKER_02
She s awesome.
4
SPEAKER_02
She s the best.
4
SPEAKER_02
She s the best.
4
SPEAKER_00
So, but anyway, and there s one female, brilliant female engineer on the team, and she was the one that actually highlighted the fact that women often don t have pockets.
4
SPEAKER_00
It was like, whoa, that was not even a category in the code.
4
SPEAKER_00
of like, wait a minute, you can take the phone out of some other place than your pocket.
4
SPEAKER_00
So anyway, that s a funny thing when you re considering people laying in bed watching a phone, you have to consider, you have to, you know, diversity in all its forms, depending on the problem, depending on the context.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_02
Actually, this is like a very important, I think this is, you know, you probably get this all the time, like people are worried that AI is gonna take over humanity and like,
4
SPEAKER_02
get rid of all the humans in the world.
4
SPEAKER_02
I m like, actually, that s not my biggest concern.
4
SPEAKER_02
My biggest concern is that we are building bias into these systems.
4
SPEAKER_02
And then they re like deployed at large and at scale.
4
SPEAKER_02
And before you know it, you re kind of accentuating the bias that exists in society.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I m not, I know people, it s very important to worry about that, but I, the worry is an emergent phenomena to me, which is a very good one, because I think these systems are actually,
4
SPEAKER_00
by encoding the data that exists, they re revealing the bias in society, they re teaching us what the bias is, therefore we can now improve that bias within the system.
4
SPEAKER_00
So they re almost like putting a mirror to ourselves.
4
SPEAKER_02
So I m not... We have to be open to looking at the mirror, though.
4
SPEAKER_02
We have to be open to scrutinizing the data if you just take it as...
4
SPEAKER_02
ground truth, you know?
4
SPEAKER_00
Or you don t even have to look at the, I mean, yes, the data s how you fix it, but then you just look at the behavior of the system, and it s like, and you realize, holy crap, this thing is kind of racist.
4
SPEAKER_00
Right.
4
SPEAKER_00
Like, why is that?
4
SPEAKER_00
And then you look at the data, it s like, oh, okay.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then you start to realize that, I think that s a much more effective way to be introspective as a society than through sort of political discourse, like AI kind of.
4
SPEAKER_01
Right.
4
SPEAKER_00
Cause people are easy.
4
SPEAKER_00
That s cool.
4
SPEAKER_00
People are, for some reason, more productive and rigorous in criticizing AI than they re criticizing each other.
4
SPEAKER_00
So I think this is just a nice method for studying society and see which way progress lies.
4
SPEAKER_00
Anyway, what were we talking about?
4
SPEAKER_00
The problem of watching Netflix in bed or elsewhere and seeing which parts are exciting and which parts are boring.
4
SPEAKER_02
relatively constrained because, you know, you have a captive audience and you kind of know the context.
4
SPEAKER_02
And one thing you said that was really key is that you re doing this in aggregate, right?
4
SPEAKER_02
Like we re looking at aggregated response of people.
4
SPEAKER_02
And so when you see a peak, say a smile peak, they re probably smiling or laughing at something that s in the content.
4
SPEAKER_02
So that was one of the first problems we were able to solve.
4
SPEAKER_02
And when we see the smile peak, it doesn t mean that these people are internally happy.
4
SPEAKER_02
They re just laughing at content.
4
SPEAKER_02
So it s important to, you know, call it for what it is.
4
SPEAKER_00
but it s still really, really useful data.
4
SPEAKER_00
I wonder how that compares to, so what like YouTube and other places will use is obviously they don t have, for the most case, they don t have that kind of data, but they have the data of when people tune out, like drop off.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I think that s, in aggregate for YouTube, at least a pretty powerful signal.
4
SPEAKER_00
I worry about what that leads to because,
4
SPEAKER_00
looking at YouTubers that really care about views and try to maximize the number of views, I think when they say that the video should be constantly interesting, which seems like a good goal, I feel like that leads to this manic pace of a video.
4
SPEAKER_00
The idea that I would speak at the current speed that I m speaking, I don t know.
4
SPEAKER_02
and that every moment has to be engaging, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
Engaging.
4
SPEAKER_00
I think there s value to silence, there s value to the boring bits.
4
SPEAKER_00
I mean, some of the greatest movies ever, some of the greatest stories ever told, they have boring bits, seemingly boring bits, I don t know.
4
SPEAKER_00
I wonder about that.
4
SPEAKER_00
Of course, it s not that the human face can capture that either, it s just giving an extra signal.
4
SPEAKER_00
You have to really,
4
SPEAKER_00
I don t know, you have to really collect deeper, long-term data about what was meaningful to people.
4
SPEAKER_00
When they think 30 days from now, what they still remember, what moved them, what changed them, what helped them grow, that kind of stuff.
4
SPEAKER_02
I don t know if there are any researchers out there who are doing this type of work.
4
SPEAKER_02
Wouldn t it be so cool to tie
4
SPEAKER_02
your emotional expressions while you re, say, listening to a podcast interview.
4
SPEAKER_02
And then 30 days later, interview people and say, hey, what do you remember?
4
SPEAKER_02
You ve watched this 30 days ago, like what stuck with you?
4
SPEAKER_02
And then see if there s any, there ought to be, maybe there ought to be some correlation between these emotional experiences and yeah, what you, what stays with you.
4
SPEAKER_00
So the one guy listening now on the beach in Brazil, please record a video of yourself listening to this and send it to me, and then I ll interview you 30 days from now.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, that d be great.
4
SPEAKER_02
It ll be statistically significant.
4
SPEAKER_00
I didn t send anyone, but you know.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I think that s really fascinating.
4
SPEAKER_00
I think that kind of holds the key to
4
SPEAKER_00
to a future where entertainment, or content is both entertaining and I don t know, makes you better empowering in some way.
4
SPEAKER_00
So figuring out like, showing people stuff that entertains them, but also they re happy they watched 30 days from now because they become a better person because of it.
4
SPEAKER_02
Well, you know, okay, not to riff on this topic for too long, but I have two children, right?
4
SPEAKER_02
And I see my role as a parent as like a chief opportunity officer.
4
SPEAKER_02
Like I am responsible for exposing them to all sorts of things in the world.
4
SPEAKER_02
But often I have no idea of knowing like, what s stuck?
4
SPEAKER_02
Like, what was, you know, is this actually gonna be transformative, you know, for them 10 years down the line?
4
SPEAKER_02
And I wish there was a way to quantify these experiences.
4
SPEAKER_02
Like, are they,
4
SPEAKER_02
I can tell in the moment if they re engaging, right?
4
SPEAKER_02
I can tell.
4
SPEAKER_02
But it s really hard to know if they re going to remember them 10 years from now or if it s going to
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, that one is weird because it seems like kids remember the weirdest things.
4
SPEAKER_00
I ve seen parents do incredible stuff for their kids and they don t remember any of that.
4
SPEAKER_00
They remember some tiny, small, sweet thing a parent did.
4
SPEAKER_02
Right.
4
SPEAKER_02
Like some- Like I took you to like this amazing country vacation.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, exactly.
4
SPEAKER_00
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
4
SPEAKER_00
So I think they just were designed that way.
4
SPEAKER_00
They want to mess with your head.
4
SPEAKER_00
But definitely kids are very impacted by, it seems like, sort of negative events.
4
SPEAKER_00
So minimizing the number of negative events.
4
SPEAKER_00
is important, but not too much, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
You can t just like, you know, there s still discipline and challenge and all those kinds of things, so.
4
SPEAKER_00
You want some adversity for sure.
4
SPEAKER_00
So yeah, I mean, I m definitely, when I have kids, I m gonna drive them out into the woods.
4
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then they have to survive and figure out how to make their way back home, like 20 miles out.
4
SPEAKER_02
Okay.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and after that, we can go for ice cream.
4
SPEAKER_00
Anyway, I m working on this whole parenting thing.
4
SPEAKER_00
I haven t figured it out, okay.
4
SPEAKER_00
What were we talking about?
4
SPEAKER_00
Yes, affectiva, the problem of emotion.
4
SPEAKER_00
of emotion detection.
4
SPEAKER_00
So there s some people, maybe we can just speak to that a little more, where there s folks like Lisa Feldman Barrett that challenged this idea that emotion could be fully detected, or even well detected from the human face, that there s so much more to emotion.
4
SPEAKER_00
What do you think about ideas like hers, criticism like hers?
4
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, I actually agree with a lot of Lisa s criticisms.
4
SPEAKER_02
So even my PhD worked like 20 plus years ago now.
4
SPEAKER_00
Time flies when you re having fun.
4
SPEAKER_02
I know, right?
4
SPEAKER_02
That was back when I did like dynamic Bayesian networks.
4
SPEAKER_00
I would say that s before deep learning.
4
SPEAKER_02
That was before deep learning.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I know.
4
SPEAKER_00
Back in my day.
4
SPEAKER_02
Now you can just like use.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it s all the same architecture.
4
SPEAKER_00
You can apply it to anything, yeah.
4
SPEAKER_02
Right, right.
4
SPEAKER_02
But yeah, but even then I kind of, I did not subscribe to this like theory of basic emotions where it s just the simplistic mapping, one-to-one mapping between facial expressions and emotions.
4
SPEAKER_02
I actually think also we re not in the business of trying to identify your true emotional internal state.
4
SPEAKER_02
We just wanna quantify
6
SPEAKER_02
in this industry is the time to market.
6
SPEAKER_02
So often we re asked to lock or do a code freeze two years before the car is going to be on the road.
6
SPEAKER_02
I m like, guys, do you understand the pace with which technology moves?
6
SPEAKER_02
So I think car companies are really trying to make the Tesla transition to become more of a software-driven
6
SPEAKER_02
architecture, and that s hard for many.
6
SPEAKER_02
It s just the cultural change.
6
SPEAKER_02
I mean, I m sure you ve experienced that, right?
6
SPEAKER_00
Oh, definitely.
6
SPEAKER_00
I think one of the biggest inventions or imperatives created by Tesla is, like, to me personally, okay, people are gonna complain about this, but I know electric vehicle, I know autopilot, AI stuff.
6
SPEAKER_00
To me, the software, over-the-air software updates is like the biggest revolution in cars.
6
SPEAKER_00
And it is extremely difficult to switch to that because it is a culture shift.
6
SPEAKER_00
At first, especially if you re not comfortable with it, it seems dangerous.
6
SPEAKER_00
There s an approach to cars, it s so safety focused for so many decades.
6
SPEAKER_00
that like, what do you mean we dynamically change code?
6
SPEAKER_00
The whole point is you have a thing that you test, like- Right, you spend a year testing.
6
SPEAKER_00
And like, it s not reliable because do you know how much it costs if we have to recall these cars?
6
SPEAKER_00
And there s an understandable obsession with safety, but the downside of an obsession with safety
6
SPEAKER_00
is the same as with being obsessed with safety as a parent.
6
SPEAKER_00
It s like, if you do that too much, you limit the potential development and the flourishing of, in that particular aspect, human being, but in this particular aspect, the software.
6
SPEAKER_00
the artificial neural network of it.
6
SPEAKER_00
But it s tough to do.
6
SPEAKER_00
It s really tough to do, culturally and technically.
6
SPEAKER_00
The deployment, the mass deployment of software is really, really difficult.
6
SPEAKER_00
But I hope that s where the industry is doing.
6
SPEAKER_00
One of the reasons I really want Tesla to succeed is exactly about that point.
6
SPEAKER_00
Not autopilot, not the electrical vehicle, but the softwarization.
6
SPEAKER_00
of basically everything but cars, especially, because to me, that s actually going to increase two things, increase safety, because you can update much faster, but also increase the effectiveness of folks like you who dream about enriching the human experience with AI, because you can just like, there s a feature, like you want like a new emoji or whatever, like the way TikTok releases filters, you can just release that for in-car,
6
SPEAKER_00
in car stuff, so.
6
SPEAKER_00
But yeah, that s definitely.
6
SPEAKER_02
One of the use cases we re looking into is once you know the sentiment of the passengers in the vehicle, you can optimize the temperature in the car, you can change the lighting, right?
6
SPEAKER_02
So if the backseat passengers are falling asleep, you can dim the lights, you can lower the music, right?
6
SPEAKER_02
You can do all sorts of things.
6
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
6
SPEAKER_00
I mean, of course, you could do that kind of stuff with a two year delay, but it s tougher.
6
SPEAKER_00
Right.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
6
SPEAKER_00
Do you think Tesla or Waymo or some of these companies that are doing semi or fully autonomous driving should be doing driver sensing?
6
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
6
SPEAKER_00
Are you thinking about that kind of stuff?
6
SPEAKER_00
So not just how we can enhance the in-cab experience for cars that are manually driven, but the ones that are increasingly more autonomously driven?
6
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, so if we fast forward to the universe where it s fully autonomous, I think interior sensing becomes extremely important because the role of the driver isn t just to drive.
6
SPEAKER_02
If you think about it, the driver almost manages the dynamics within a vehicle.
6
SPEAKER_02
And so who s going to play that role when it s an autonomous car?
6
SPEAKER_02
a solution that is able to say, oh my God, Lex is bored to death because the car s moving way too slow.
6
SPEAKER_02
Let s engage Lex.
6
SPEAKER_02
Or Rana s freaking out because she doesn t trust this vehicle yet, so let s tell Rana a little bit more information about the route.
6
SPEAKER_02
Or somebody s having a heart attack in the car.
6
SPEAKER_02
You need interior sensing in fully autonomous vehicles.
6
SPEAKER_02
But with semi-autonomous vehicles, I think it s
6
SPEAKER_02
I think it s really key to have driver monitoring because semi-autonomous means that sometimes the car is in charge, sometimes the driver is in charge or the co-pilot, right?
6
SPEAKER_02
And you need both systems to be on the same page.
6
SPEAKER_02
The car needs to know if the driver s asleep before it transitions control over to the driver.
6
SPEAKER_02
And sometimes if the driver s too tired, the car can say, I m going to be a better driver than you are right now.
6
SPEAKER_02
I m taking control over.
6
SPEAKER_02
So this dynamic, this dance,
6
SPEAKER_02
It s so key and you can t do that without driver sensing.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, there s a disagreement for the longest time I ve had with Elon that this is obvious that this should be in the Tesla from day one.
6
SPEAKER_00
And it s obvious that driver sensing is not a hindrance.
6
SPEAKER_00
It s not obvious.
6
SPEAKER_00
I should be careful because having studied this problem, nothing s really obvious, but it seems very likely driver sensing is not a hindrance to an experience.
6
SPEAKER_00
It s only enriching to the experience and likely increases the safety.
6
SPEAKER_00
That said, it is very surprising to me, just having studied semi-autonomous driving, how well humans are able to manage that dance.
6
SPEAKER_00
because it was the intuition before you were doing that kind of thing that humans will become just incredibly distracted.
6
SPEAKER_00
They would just like let the thing do its thing.
6
SPEAKER_00
But they re able to, you know, because it is life and death, and they re able to manage that somehow.
6
SPEAKER_00
But that said, there s no reason not to have driver sensing on top of that.
6
SPEAKER_00
I feel like that s going to,
6
SPEAKER_00
allow you to do that dance that you re currently doing without driver sensing, except touching the steering wheel, to do that even better.
6
SPEAKER_00
I mean, the possibilities are endless.
6
SPEAKER_00
And the machine learning possibilities are endless.
6
SPEAKER_00
It s such a beautiful
6
SPEAKER_00
It s also a constrained environment, so you could do much more effectively than you can with the external environment.
6
SPEAKER_00
External environment is full of weird edge cases and complexities.
6
SPEAKER_00
Inside, there s so much, it s so fascinating, such a fascinating world.
6
SPEAKER_00
I do hope that companies like Tesla and others, even Waymo, which I don t even know if Waymo s doing anything sophisticated inside the cab.
6
SPEAKER_02
I don t think so.
6
SPEAKER_00
It s like, what is it?
6
SPEAKER_00
I honestly think, I honestly think, it goes back to the robotics thing we were talking about, which is like, great engineers that are building these AI systems just are afraid of the human being.
6
SPEAKER_02
and not thinking about the human experience, they re thinking about the features and, yeah, the perceptual abilities of that thing.
6
SPEAKER_00
They think the best way I can serve the human is by doing the best perception and control I can, by looking at the external environment, keeping the human safe.
6
SPEAKER_01
Right, right.
6
SPEAKER_00
But like, there s a, I m here.
6
SPEAKER_00
Right.
6
SPEAKER_00
Like, you know, I need to be noticed and, you know,
6
SPEAKER_00
interacted with and understood and all those kinds of things, even just on a personal level for entertainment, honestly, for entertainment.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
6
SPEAKER_02
You know, one of the coolest work we did in collaboration with MIT around this was we looked at longitudinal data, right?
6
SPEAKER_02
Because, you know, MIT had access to like,
6
SPEAKER_02
tons of data.
6
SPEAKER_02
And like just seeing the patterns of people like driving in the morning off to work versus like commuting back from work or weekend driving versus weekday driving.
6
SPEAKER_02
And wouldn t it be so cool if your car knew that and then was able to optimize either the route or the experience or even make recommendations?
6
SPEAKER_02
I think it s very powerful.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, like why are you taking this route?
6
SPEAKER_00
You re always unhappy when you take this route, and you re always happy when you take this alternative route.
6
SPEAKER_00
Take that route instead.
6
SPEAKER_00
I mean, to have that, even that little step of relationship with a car, I think is incredible.
6
SPEAKER_00
Of course, you have to get the privacy right, you have to get all that kind of stuff right, but I wish I, honestly, people are paranoid about this, but I would like a smart refrigerator.
6
SPEAKER_00
we have such a deep connection with food as a human civilization.
6
SPEAKER_00
I would like to have a refrigerator that would understand me, that I also have a complex relationship with food, because I, you know.
6
SPEAKER_00
pig out too easily and all that kind of stuff.
6
SPEAKER_00
Maybe I want the refrigerator to be like, are you sure about this?
6
SPEAKER_00
Because maybe you re just feeling down or tired.
6
SPEAKER_00
Maybe let s sleep on it.
6
SPEAKER_02
Your vision of the smart refrigerator is way kinder than mine.
6
SPEAKER_00
Is it just me yelling at you?
6
SPEAKER_02
No, it was just, because I don t,
6
SPEAKER_02
You know, I don t drink alcohol, I don t smoke, but I eat a ton of chocolate, like it s my vice.
6
SPEAKER_02
And sometimes ice cream too.
6
SPEAKER_02
And I m like, okay, my smart refrigerator will just lock down.
6
SPEAKER_02
It ll just say, dude, you ve had way too many today, like done.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, no, but here s the thing.
6
SPEAKER_00
Do you regret having, like, let s say, not the next day, but 30 days later, what would you like the refrigerator to have done then?
6
SPEAKER_02
Well, I think actually, like, the more positive relationship would be one where there s a conversation, right?
6
SPEAKER_02
As opposed to like, that s probably like the more,
6
SPEAKER_02
sustainable relationship.
6
SPEAKER_00
It s like late at night, just, no, listen, listen, I know I told you an hour ago that this is not a good idea, but just listen, things have changed.
6
SPEAKER_00
I can just imagine a bunch of stuff being made up just to convince you.
6
SPEAKER_02
Oh my God, that s hilarious.
6
SPEAKER_00
But I mean, I just think that there s opportunities there.
6
SPEAKER_00
I mean, maybe not locking down, but for our systems that are such
6
SPEAKER_00
a deep part of our lives.
6
SPEAKER_00
We use, a lot of us, a lot of people that commute use their car every single day.
6
SPEAKER_00
A lot of us use the refrigerator every single day, the microwave every single day.
6
SPEAKER_00
I feel like certain things could be made more efficient, more enriching, and AI is there to help, like some just basic recognition of you as a human being, but your patterns of what makes you happy and not happy and all that kind of stuff.
6
SPEAKER_00
And the car, obviously.
6
SPEAKER_02
Maybe we ll say, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, instead of this like Ben and Jerry s ice cream, how about this hummus and carrots or something?
6
SPEAKER_02
I don t know.
6
SPEAKER_02
It would make a just-in-time recommendation, right?
6
SPEAKER_00
But not like a generic one, but a reminder that last time you chose the carrots, you smiled 17 times more the next day.
6
SPEAKER_02
You were happier the next day, right?
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, you were happier the next day.
6
SPEAKER_00
But then again, if you re the kind of person that gets better from negative comments, you could say like, hey, remember that wedding you re going to?
6
SPEAKER_00
You wanna fit into that dress?
6
SPEAKER_00
Remember about that?
6
SPEAKER_00
Let s think about that before you re eating this.
6
SPEAKER_00
Probably that would work for me, like a refrigerator that is just ruthless, it s shaming me.
6
SPEAKER_00
But I would, of course, welcome it.
6
SPEAKER_00
That would work for me, just that.
6
SPEAKER_02
I think it would, if it s really smart, it would optimize its nudging based on what works for you, right?
6
SPEAKER_00
Exactly, that s the whole point.
6
SPEAKER_00
Personalization, in every way, depersonalization.
6
SPEAKER_00
You were a part of a webinar titled Advancing Road Safety, the State of Alcohol Intoxication Research.
6
SPEAKER_00
So for people who don t know, every year 1.3 million people around the world die in road crashes and more than 20% of these fatalities are estimated to be alcohol related.
6
SPEAKER_00
A lot of them are also distraction related.
6
SPEAKER_00
So can AI help with the alcohol thing?
6
SPEAKER_02
I think the answer is yes.
6
SPEAKER_02
There are signals, and we know that as humans, like we can tell when a person, you know, is at different phases of being drunk, right?
6
SPEAKER_02
And I think you can use technology to do the same.
6
SPEAKER_02
And again, I think the ultimate solution is gonna be a combination of different sensors.
6
SPEAKER_00
How hard is the problem from the vision perspective?
6
SPEAKER_02
I think it s non-trivial.
6
SPEAKER_02
I think it s non-trivial.
6
SPEAKER_02
And I think the biggest part is getting the data, right?
6
SPEAKER_02
It s like getting enough data examples.
6
SPEAKER_02
So for this research project, we partnered with the transportation authorities of Sweden, and we literally had a racetrack with a safety driver, and we basically progressively got people drunk.
6
SPEAKER_02
Nice.
6
SPEAKER_02
That s a very expensive data set to collect and you want to collect it globally and in multiple conditions.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, the ethics of collecting a data set where people are drunk is tricky, which is funny because, I mean, let s put drunk driving aside.
6
SPEAKER_00
The number of drunk people in the world every day is very large.
6
SPEAKER_00
It d be nice to have a large data set of drunk people getting progressively drunk.
6
SPEAKER_00
In fact, you could build an app where people can donate their data because it s hilarious.
6
SPEAKER_02
Right, actually, yeah, but the liability.
6
SPEAKER_00
Liability, the ethics, how do you get it right?
6
SPEAKER_00
It s tricky, it s really, really tricky.
6
SPEAKER_00
Because like, drinking is one of those things that s funny and hilarious and we re loved and so on and so forth.
6
SPEAKER_00
But it s also the thing that hurts a lot of people, like a lot of people.
6
SPEAKER_00
Like alcohol is one of those things, it s legal, but it,
6
SPEAKER_00
it s really damaging to a lot of lives.
6
SPEAKER_00
It destroys lives.
6
SPEAKER_00
And not just in the driving context.
6
SPEAKER_00
I should mention, people should listen to Andrew Huberman, who recently talked about alcohol.
6
SPEAKER_00
He has an amazing podcast.
6
SPEAKER_00
Andrew Huberman is a neuroscientist from Stanford and a good friend of mine.
6
SPEAKER_00
And he s like a human encyclopedia about all health-related wisdom.
6
SPEAKER_00
So if there s a podcast, you would love it.
6
SPEAKER_02
I would love that.
6
SPEAKER_00
Oh, you don t know Andrew Huberman?
6
SPEAKER_00
Okay, listen, you listen to Andrew, he s called Huberman Lab Podcast.
6
SPEAKER_00
This is your assignment, just listen to one.
6
SPEAKER_00
I guarantee you this will be a thing where you say, Lex, this is the greatest human I have ever discovered, so.
6
SPEAKER_02
Oh my God, because I m really on a journey of kind of health and wellness, and I m learning lots, and I m trying to build these, I guess, atomic habits around just being healthy.
6
SPEAKER_02
So yeah, I m definitely gonna do this.
6
SPEAKER_00
His whole thing, this is great.
6
SPEAKER_00
He s a legit scientist, really well-published, but in his podcast,
6
SPEAKER_00
what he does, he s not talking about his own work.
6
SPEAKER_00
He s like a human encyclopedia of papers.
6
SPEAKER_00
And so his whole thing is he takes a topic and in a very fast, you mentioned atomic habits, like very clear way, summarizes the research in a way that leads to protocols of what you should do.
6
SPEAKER_00
He s really big on like, not like this is what the science says, but like this is literally what you should be doing according to science.
6
SPEAKER_00
He s really big, and there s a lot of recommendations he does, which several of them I definitely don t do, like get sunlight as soon as possible from waking up and for prolonged periods of time.
6
SPEAKER_00
That s a really big one, and there s a lot of science behind that one.
6
SPEAKER_00
There s a bunch of stuff, very systematic.
6
SPEAKER_00
And you re gonna be like, Lex, this is my new favorite person, I guarantee it.
6
SPEAKER_00
And if you guys somehow don t know Andrew Huberman and you care about your well-being, you know, you should definitely listen to him.
6
SPEAKER_00
I love you, Andrew.
6
SPEAKER_00
Anyway, so what were we talking about?
6
SPEAKER_00
Oh, alcohol and detecting alcohol.
6
SPEAKER_00
So this is a problem you care about and you re trying to solve.
6
SPEAKER_02
And actually like broadening it, I do believe that the car is gonna be a wellness center.
6
SPEAKER_02
Because again, imagine if you have a variety of sensors inside the vehicle tracking, not just your emotional state or level of distraction and drowsiness and drowsiness, level of distraction, drowsiness and intoxication, but also maybe even things like your heart rate and your heart rate variability and your breathing rate.
6
SPEAKER_02
And it can start like optimizing, yeah, it can optimize the ride based on what your goals are.
6
SPEAKER_02
So I think we re gonna start to see more of that and I m excited about that.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, what are the challenges you re tackling with SmartEye currently?
6
SPEAKER_00
What s like the trickiest things to get?
6
SPEAKER_00
Is it basically convincing more and more car companies that
7
SPEAKER_01
having AI inside the car is a good idea, or is there some, is there more technical algorithmic challenges?
7
SPEAKER_01
What s been keeping you mentally busy?
7
SPEAKER_00
I think a lot of the car companies we are in conversations with are already interested in definitely driver monitoring.
7
SPEAKER_00
Like, I think it s becoming a must-have.
7
SPEAKER_00
But even interior sensing, I can see, like, we re engaged in a lot of, like, advanced engineering projects and proof of concepts.
7
SPEAKER_00
I think technologically, though, and even the technology, I can see a path to making it happen.
7
SPEAKER_00
I think it s the use case.
7
SPEAKER_00
How does the car respond once it knows something about you?
7
SPEAKER_00
Because you want it to respond in a thoughtful way that isn t off-putting to the consumer in the car.
7
SPEAKER_00
So I think that s, like the user experience, I don t think we ve really nailed that.
7
SPEAKER_00
And we usually, that s not part, we re the sensing platform, but we usually collaborate with the car manufacturer to decide what the use case is.
7
SPEAKER_00
So say you figure out that somebody s angry while driving.
7
SPEAKER_00
Okay, what should the car do?
7
SPEAKER_01
Do you see yourself as a role of nudging, of like basically coming up with solutions essentially, and then the car manufacturers kind of put their own little spin on it?
7
SPEAKER_00
Right, like we are like the ideation, creative thought partner, but at the end of the day, the car company needs to decide what s on brand for them, right?
7
SPEAKER_00
Like maybe when it figures out that you re distracted or drowsy, it shows you a coffee cup, right?
7
SPEAKER_00
Or maybe it takes more aggressive behaviors and basically said, okay, if you don t like take a rest in the next five minutes, the car s gonna shut down, right?
7
SPEAKER_00
Like there s a whole range of actions the car can take.
7
SPEAKER_00
and doing the thing that is most, yeah, that builds trust with the driver and the passengers, I think that s what we need to be very careful about.
7
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, car companies are funny, because they have their own like, I mean, that s why people get cars still.
7
SPEAKER_01
I hope that changes, but they get it, because it s a certain feel and look, and it s a certain, they become proud, like Mercedes-Benz or BMW or whatever,
7
SPEAKER_01
And that s their thing, that s the family brand or something like that.
7
SPEAKER_01
Or Ford or GM, whatever, they stick to that thing.
7
SPEAKER_01
It s interesting.
7
SPEAKER_01
It should be, I don t know, it should be a little more about the technology inside.
7
SPEAKER_01
And I suppose there too, there could be a branding, like a very specific style of luxury or fun.
7
SPEAKER_01
All that kind of stuff, yeah.
7
SPEAKER_00
You know, I have an AI focused fund to invest in early stage kind of AI driven companies.
7
SPEAKER_00
And one of the companies we re looking at is trying to do what Tesla did, but for boats.
7
SPEAKER_00
for recreational boats, yeah.
7
SPEAKER_00
So they re building an electric and kind of slash autonomous boat.
7
SPEAKER_00
And it s kind of the same issues, like what kind of sensors can you put in?
7
SPEAKER_00
What kind of states can you detect both exterior and interior within the boat?
7
SPEAKER_00
Anyways, it s like really interesting.
7
SPEAKER_00
Do you boat at all?
7
SPEAKER_01
No, not well.
7
SPEAKER_01
Not in that way.
7
SPEAKER_01
I do like to get on the lake or a river and fish from a boat.
7
SPEAKER_01
But that s not boating.
7
SPEAKER_00
That s the difference.
7
SPEAKER_00
That s still boating.
7
SPEAKER_00
Low tech.
7
SPEAKER_00
Low tech boat.
7
SPEAKER_01
Get away from, get closer to nature boat.
7
SPEAKER_01
I guess going out into the ocean is also getting closer to nature in some deep sense.
7
SPEAKER_01
I mean, I guess that s why people love it.
7
SPEAKER_01
the enormity of the water just underneath you, yeah.
7
SPEAKER_01
I love the, I love both.
7
SPEAKER_01
I love salt water.
7
SPEAKER_01
It was like the big and just it s humbling to be in front of this giant thing that s so powerful that was here before us and be here after.
7
SPEAKER_01
But I also love the piece of a small like wooded lake.
7
SPEAKER_01
It s just everything s calm.
7
SPEAKER_01
Therapeutic.
7
SPEAKER_01
You tweeted that I m excited about Amazon s acquisition of iRobot.
7
SPEAKER_01
I think it s a super interesting, just given the trajectory of which you re a part of, of these, honestly, small number of companies that are playing in this space that are trying to have an impact on human beings.
7
SPEAKER_01
So it is an interesting moment in time that Amazon would acquire iRobot.
7
SPEAKER_01
You tweet, I imagine a future where home robots are as ubiquitous as microwaves or toasters.
7
SPEAKER_01
Here are three reasons why I think this is exciting.
7
SPEAKER_01
If you remember, I can look it up.
7
SPEAKER_01
But why is this exciting to you?
7
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I think the first reason why this is exciting, I can t remember the exact order in which I put them, but one is just it s going to be an incredible platform for understanding our behaviors within the home, right?
7
SPEAKER_00
Like, you know, if you think about Roomba, which is, you know, the robot vacuum cleaner, the flagship product of iRobot at the moment.
7
SPEAKER_00
It s like running around your home, understanding the layout.
7
SPEAKER_00
It s understanding what s clean and what s not.
7
SPEAKER_00
How often do you clean your house?
7
SPEAKER_00
And all of these behaviors are a piece of the puzzle in terms of understanding who you are as a consumer.
7
SPEAKER_00
And I think that could be, again, used in really meaningful ways, not just to recommend better products or whatever, but actually to improve your experience as a human being.
7
SPEAKER_00
So I think that s very interesting.
7
SPEAKER_00
I think the natural evolution of these
7
SPEAKER_00
robots in the home.
7
SPEAKER_00
So it s interesting.
7
SPEAKER_00
Roomba isn t really a social robot, right, at the moment.
7
SPEAKER_00
But I once interviewed one of the chief engineers on the Roomba team, and he talked about how people named their Roombas.
7
SPEAKER_00
And if their Roomba broke down, they would call in and say, you know, my Roomba broke down, and the company would say, well, we ll just send you a new one.
7
SPEAKER_00
And no, no, no, Rosie, like, you have to like, yeah, I want you to fix this particular robot.
7
SPEAKER_00
So people have already built interesting emotional connections with these home robots.
7
SPEAKER_00
And I think that, again, that provides a platform for really interesting things to just motivate change.
7
SPEAKER_00
Like it could help you.
7
SPEAKER_00
I mean, one of the companies that spun out of MIT, Catalia Health, the guy who started it spent a lot of time building robots that help with weight management.
7
SPEAKER_00
So weight management, sleep, eating better, yeah, all of these things.
7
SPEAKER_01
But if I m being honest, Amazon does not exactly have a track record of winning over people in terms of trust.
7
SPEAKER_01
Now, that said, it s a really difficult problem for a human being to let a robot in their home that has a camera on it.
7
SPEAKER_01
That s really, really, really tough.
7
SPEAKER_01
And I think Roomba actually,
7
SPEAKER_01
I have to think about this, but I m pretty sure now, or for some time already, has had cameras, because they re doing, the most recent Roomba, I have so many Roombas.
7
SPEAKER_00
Oh, you actually do?
7
SPEAKER_01
Well, I program, I don t use a Roomba for back, people that have been to my place, they re like, yeah, you definitely don t use these Roombas.
7
SPEAKER_01
That could be a good.
7
SPEAKER_00
I can t tell the valence of this comment.
7
SPEAKER_00
Was it a compliment?
7
SPEAKER_01
No, it s just a bunch of electronics everywhere.
7
SPEAKER_01
I have six or seven computers.
7
SPEAKER_01
I have robots everywhere, Lego robots.
7
SPEAKER_01
I have small robots and big robots.
7
SPEAKER_01
It s just giant piles of robot stuff.
7
SPEAKER_01
And yeah, but including the Roombas, they re being used for their body and intelligence, but not for their purpose.
7
SPEAKER_01
I ve changed them, repurposed them for other purposes, for deeper, more meaningful purposes than just like the Bada Roba.
7
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, which is, you know, brings a lot of people happiness, I m sure.
7
SPEAKER_01
They have a camera because the thing they advertised
7
SPEAKER_01
I had my own cameras too, but the camera on the new Roomba, they have like state-of-the-art poop detection as they advertised, which is a very difficult, apparently it s a big problem for vacuum cleaners is, you know, if they go over like dog poop, it just runs it over and creates a giant mess.
7
SPEAKER_01
So they have like, apparently they collected like a huge amount of data and different shapes and looks and whatever of poop and now they re able to avoid it and so on.
7
SPEAKER_01
They re very proud of this.
7
SPEAKER_01
So there is a camera, but you don t think of it as having a camera.
7
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, you don t think of it as having a camera because you ve grown to trust it, I guess, because our phones, at least most of us, seem to trust this phone, even though there s a camera looking directly at you.
7
SPEAKER_01
I think that if you trust that the company
7
SPEAKER_01
is taking security very seriously.
7
SPEAKER_01
I actually don t know how that trust was earned with smartphones.
7
SPEAKER_01
I think it just started to provide a lot of positive value to your life where you just took it in and then the company over time has shown that it takes privacy very seriously, that kind of stuff.
7
SPEAKER_01
But I just,
7
SPEAKER_01
Amazon is not always, in its social robots, communicated this is a trustworthy thing, both in terms of culture and competence.
7
SPEAKER_01
Because I think privacy is not just about what do you intend to do, but also how good are you at doing that kind of thing.
7
SPEAKER_01
So that s a really hard problem to solve.
7
SPEAKER_00
But I mean, but a lot of us have Alexas at home.
7
SPEAKER_00
And I mean, Alexa could be listening in the whole time, right?
7
SPEAKER_00
And doing all sorts of nefarious things with the data.
7
SPEAKER_00
Hopefully it s not, but I don t think it is.
7
SPEAKER_01
But Amazon is not, it s such a tricky thing for a company to get right, which is to earn the trust.
7
SPEAKER_01
I don t think Alexa s earned people s trust quite yet.
7
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I think it s not there quite yet.
7
SPEAKER_00
I agree.
7
SPEAKER_00
And they struggle with this kind of stuff.
7
SPEAKER_01
In fact, when these topics are brought up, people always get nervous.
7
SPEAKER_01
And I think
7
SPEAKER_01
if you get nervous about it, the way to earn people s trust is not by like, ooh, don t talk about this.
7
SPEAKER_01
It s just be open, be frank, be transparent, and also create a culture of where it radiates at every level from engineer to CEO that you re good people, that you re good people,
7
SPEAKER_01
have a common sense idea of what it means to respect basic human rights and the privacy of people and all that kind of stuff.
7
SPEAKER_01
And I think that propagates throughout the, that s the best PR, which is like, over time, you understand that these are good folks doing good things.
7
SPEAKER_01
Anyway, speaking of social robots, have you heard about Tesla, Teslabot, the humanoid robot?
7
SPEAKER_00
Yes, I have.
7
SPEAKER_00
Yes, yes, yes.
7
SPEAKER_00
But I don t exactly know what it s designed to do.
7
SPEAKER_00
Do you?
7
SPEAKER_00
You probably do.
7
SPEAKER_01
No, I know it s designed to do, but I have a different perspective on it.
7
SPEAKER_01
But it s designed to, it s a humanoid form, and it s designed for automation tasks in the same way that industrial robot arms automate tasks in the factory.
7
SPEAKER_01
So it s designed to automate tasks in the factory.
7
SPEAKER_01
But I think the humanoid form, as we were talking about before,
7
SPEAKER_01
is one that we connect with as human beings.
7
SPEAKER_01
Anything legged, obviously, but the humanoid form especially, we anthropomorphize it most intensely.
7
SPEAKER_01
And so the possibility, to me, it s exciting to see,
7
SPEAKER_01
both Atlas, developed by Boston Dynamics, and anyone, including Tesla, trying to make humanoid robots cheaper and more effective, the obvious way it transforms the world is social robotics, to me, versus automation of tasks in the factory.
7
SPEAKER_01
So, yeah, I just wanted to, in case that was something you were interested in, because I find its application in social robotics super interesting.
7
SPEAKER_00
We did a lot of work with Pepper, Pepper the Robot, a while back.
7
SPEAKER_00
We were like the emotion engine for Pepper, which is SoftBank s humanoid robot.
7
SPEAKER_01
And how tall is Pepper?
7
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, like, I don t know, like five foot maybe, right?
7
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
7
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
7
SPEAKER_00
Pretty big.
7
SPEAKER_00
Pretty big.
7
SPEAKER_00
And it was designed to be like airport lounges and, you know, retail stores, mostly customer service, right?
7
SPEAKER_00
Hotel lobbies.
7
SPEAKER_00
And I mean, I don t know where the state of the robot is, but I think it s very promising.
7
SPEAKER_00
I think there are a lot of applications where this can be helpful.
7
SPEAKER_00
I m also really interested in, yeah, social robotics for the home, right?
7
SPEAKER_00
Like that can help elderly people, for example, transport things from one location of the home to the other, or even like just have your back in case something happens.
7
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I don t know.
7
SPEAKER_00
I do think it s a very interesting space.
7
SPEAKER_00
It seems early though.
7
SPEAKER_00
Do you feel like the timing is now?
7
SPEAKER_01
I, yes, 100%.
7
SPEAKER_01
So it always seems early until it s not, right?
7
SPEAKER_00
Right, right, right, right.
7
SPEAKER_01
I think the time.
7
SPEAKER_01
I definitely think that the time is now, like this decade, for social robots.
7
SPEAKER_01
Whether the humanoid form is right, I don t think so.
7
SPEAKER_01
If we just look at Jibo as an example,
7
SPEAKER_01
I feel like most of the problem, the challenge, the opportunity of social connection between an AI system and a human being does not require you to also solve the problem of robot manipulation and bipedal mobility.
7
SPEAKER_01
I think you could do that with just a screen, honestly.
7
SPEAKER_01
But there s something about the interface of Jibo that can rotate and so on that s also compelling.
7
SPEAKER_01
But you get to see all these robot companies that fail.
7
SPEAKER_01
Incredible companies like Jibo and even, I mean, iRobot in some sense is a big success story that it was able to find
7
SPEAKER_00
Right, a niche.
7
SPEAKER_01
A niche thing and focus on it.
7
SPEAKER_01
But in some sense, it s not a success story because they didn t build any other robot.
7
SPEAKER_01
Like any other, it didn t expand into all kinds of robotics.
7
SPEAKER_01
Like once you re in the home, maybe that s what happens with Amazon is they ll flourish into all kinds of other robots.
7
SPEAKER_01
But do you have a sense, by the way, why it s so difficult to build a robotics company?
7
SPEAKER_01
Like why so many companies have failed?
7
SPEAKER_00
I think it s like you re building a vertical stack, right?
7
SPEAKER_00
Like you are building the hardware plus the software and you find you have to do this at a cost that makes sense.
7
SPEAKER_00
So I think Jibo was retailing at like, I don t know, like $800, like $700, $800.
7
SPEAKER_00
Which for the use case, right?
7
SPEAKER_00
There s a dissonance there.
7
SPEAKER_00
It s too high.
7
SPEAKER_00
So I think cost of building the whole platform in a way that is affordable for what value it s bringing, I think that s the challenge.
7
SPEAKER_00
I think for these home robots that are going to help you do stuff around the home,
7
SPEAKER_00
That s a challenge too, like the mobility piece of it.
7
SPEAKER_00
That s hard.
7
SPEAKER_01
One of the things I m really excited with TeslaBot is the people working on it.
7
SPEAKER_01
and that s probably the criticism I would apply to some of the other folks who worked on social robots, is the people working on Teslabot know how to, they re focused on and know how to do mass manufacture and create a product that s super cheap.
7
SPEAKER_01
That s the focus.
7
SPEAKER_01
The engineering focus isn t, I would say, you can also criticize them for that, is they re not focused on the experience of the robot.
7
SPEAKER_01
They re focused on how to get this thing
7
SPEAKER_01
to do the basic stuff that the humanoid form requires, to do it as cheap as possible.
7
SPEAKER_01
The fewest number of actuators, the fewest numbers of motors, the increasing efficiency, they decrease the weight, all that kind of stuff.
7
SPEAKER_00
So that s really interesting.
7
SPEAKER_01
I would say that Jibo and all those folks, they focus on the design, the experience, all of that, and it s secondary how to manufacture.
7
SPEAKER_01
But it s like, no, you have to think,
7
SPEAKER_01
like the Tesla bot folks from First Principles, what is the fewest number of components, the cheapest components, how can I build it as much in-house as possible without having to consider all the complexities of a supply chain, all that kind of stuff?
7
SPEAKER_01
Because if you have to build a robotics company, you re not building one robot, you re building hopefully millions of robots and you have to figure out how to do that where
8
SPEAKER_01
The final thing, I mean, if it s Jibo type of robot, is there a reason why Jibo, like we can have this lengthy discussion, is there a reason why Jibo has to be over $100?
8
SPEAKER_00
It shouldn t be.
8
SPEAKER_01
Right, like the basic components.
8
SPEAKER_00
Components of it, right.
8
SPEAKER_01
Like you could start to actually discuss like, okay, what is the essential thing about Jibo?
8
SPEAKER_01
What is the cheapest way I can have a screen?
8
SPEAKER_01
What s the cheapest way I can have a rotating base?
8
SPEAKER_01
All that kind of stuff.
8
SPEAKER_01
And then you get down, continuously drive down cost.
8
SPEAKER_01
Speaking of which, you have launched an extremely successful company, you have helped others, you ve invested in companies.
8
SPEAKER_01
Can you give advice on how to start a successful company?
8
SPEAKER_00
I would say have a problem that you really, really, really want to solve, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
Something that you re deeply passionate about.
8
SPEAKER_00
And honestly, take the first step.
8
SPEAKER_00
Like, that s often the hardest.
8
SPEAKER_00
And don t overthink it.
8
SPEAKER_00
Like, you know, like, this idea of a minimum viable product or a minimum viable version of an idea, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
Like, yes, you re thinking about this, like, humongous, like, super elegant, super beautiful thing.
8
SPEAKER_00
What – like, reduce it to the littlest thing you can bring to market that can solve a problem or that can –
8
SPEAKER_00
you know, that can help address a pain point that somebody has.
8
SPEAKER_00
They often tell you, like, start with a customer of one, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
If you can solve a problem for one person.
8
SPEAKER_01
then there s probably no- Yourself or some other person.
8
SPEAKER_01
Right.
8
SPEAKER_01
Pick a person.
8
SPEAKER_00
Exactly.
8
SPEAKER_01
It could be you.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
8
SPEAKER_01
That s actually often a good sign that if you enjoy a thing, enjoy a thing, or you have a specific problem that you d like to solve, that s a good end of one to focus on.
8
SPEAKER_01
Right.
8
SPEAKER_01
What else?
8
SPEAKER_01
What else is there to actually, so step one is the hardest, but there s other steps as well, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
I also think,
8
SPEAKER_00
Like who you bring around the table early on is so key, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
Like being clear on what I call like your core values or your North Star.
8
SPEAKER_00
It might sound fluffy, but actually it s not.
8
SPEAKER_00
And Roz and I, I feel like we did that very early on.
8
SPEAKER_00
We sat around her kitchen table and we said, okay, there s so many applications of this technology.
8
SPEAKER_00
How are we going to draw the line?
8
SPEAKER_00
How are we going to set boundaries?
8
SPEAKER_00
We came up with a set of core values.
8
SPEAKER_00
that in the hardest of times we fell back on to determine how we make decisions.
8
SPEAKER_00
And so I feel like just getting clarity on these core, like for us, it was respecting people s privacy, only engaging with industries where it s clear opt-in.
8
SPEAKER_00
So for instance, we don t do any work in security and surveillance.
8
SPEAKER_00
So things like that, just getting very big on, you know, one of our core values is human connection and empathy, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
And that is, yes, it s an AI company, but it s about people.
8
SPEAKER_00
Well, these are all, they become encoded in how we.
8
SPEAKER_00
act even if you re a small, tiny team of two or three or whatever.
8
SPEAKER_00
So I think that s another piece of advice.
8
SPEAKER_01
So what about finding people, hiring people?
8
SPEAKER_01
If you care about people as much as you do, it seems like such a difficult thing to hire the right people.
8
SPEAKER_00
I think early on as a startup, you want people who share the passion and the conviction because it s gonna be tough.
8
SPEAKER_00
I have yet to meet
8
SPEAKER_00
a startup where it was just a straight line to success, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
Even not just startup, like even in everyday people s lives, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
You always run into obstacles and you run into naysayers.
8
SPEAKER_00
So you need people who are believers, whether they re people on your team or even your investors.
8
SPEAKER_00
You need investors who are really believers in what you re doing because that means they will stick with you.
8
SPEAKER_00
They won t give up at the first obstacle.
8
SPEAKER_00
I think that s important.
8
SPEAKER_01
What about raising money?
8
SPEAKER_01
What about finding investors?
8
SPEAKER_01
First of all, raising money, but also raising money from the right sources from that ultimately don t hinder you, but help you, empower you, all that kind of stuff.
8
SPEAKER_01
What advice would you give there?
8
SPEAKER_01
You successfully raised money many times in your life.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, again, it s not just about the money.
8
SPEAKER_00
It s about finding the right investors who are going to be aligned in terms of what you want to build and believe in your core values.
8
SPEAKER_00
especially later on, like I, yeah, in my latest round of funding, I try to bring in investors that really care about the ethics of AI, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
And the alignment of vision and mission and core values is really important.
8
SPEAKER_00
It s like you re picking a life partner, right?
8
SPEAKER_01
It s the same kind of- So you take it that seriously for investors?
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, because they re gonna have to stick with you.
8
SPEAKER_01
You re stuck together.
8
SPEAKER_00
For a while, anyway, yeah.
8
SPEAKER_00
Maybe not for life, but for a while, for sure.
8
SPEAKER_01
For better or worse, I forget what the vowels usually sound like.
8
SPEAKER_01
For better or worse?
8
SPEAKER_01
No.
8
SPEAKER_01
Through sickness and through something.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
8
SPEAKER_01
Oh boy, yeah, anyway, it s romantic and deep and you re in it for a while.
8
SPEAKER_01
So it s not just about the money.
8
SPEAKER_01
You tweeted about going to your first capital camp investing get together and you learned a lot.
8
SPEAKER_01
So this is about investing.
8
SPEAKER_01
So what have you learned from that?
8
SPEAKER_01
What have you learned about investing in general?
8
SPEAKER_01
Because you ve been on both ends of it.
8
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I try to use my experience as an operator.
8
SPEAKER_00
now with my investor hat on when I m identifying companies to invest in.
8
SPEAKER_00
First of all, I think the good news is because I have a technology background, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
And I really understand, you know, machine learning and computer vision and AI, et cetera.
8
SPEAKER_00
I can apply that level of understanding, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
Because everybody says they re an AI company or they re an AI tech.
8
SPEAKER_00
And I m like, no, no, no, no, no.
8
SPEAKER_00
Show me the technology.
8
SPEAKER_00
So I can do that level of diligence, which I actually love.
8
SPEAKER_00
And then I have to do the litmus test of, you know, if I m in a conversation with you, am I excited to tell you about this new company that I just met, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
And if I m an ambassador for that company and I m passionate about what they re doing, I usually use that.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, that s important to me when I m investing.
8
SPEAKER_01
So that means you actually can explain what they re doing and you re excited about it.
8
SPEAKER_01
Exactly, exactly.
8
SPEAKER_00
Thank you for putting it so succinctly.
8
SPEAKER_00
Like rambling, but exactly that s it.
8
SPEAKER_01
I understand it and I m excited about it.
8
SPEAKER_01
It s funny, but sometimes it s unclear exactly.
8
SPEAKER_01
I ll hear people tell me, you know, they ll talk for a while and it sounds cool, like they paint a picture of a world, but then when you try to summarize it, you re not exactly clear of what, maybe what the core powerful idea is.
8
SPEAKER_01
Like you can t just build another Facebook or there has to be a,
8
SPEAKER_01
There has to be a core, simple to explain idea that, yeah, that then you can or can t get excited about, but it s there.
8
SPEAKER_01
It s sitting right there, yeah.
8
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, but how do you ultimately?
8
SPEAKER_01
pick who you think will be successful.
8
SPEAKER_01
It s not just about the thing you re excited about.
8
SPEAKER_01
There s other stuff.
8
SPEAKER_00
Right.
8
SPEAKER_00
And then there s all the... With early stage companies, like pre-seed companies, which is where I m investing, sometimes the business model isn t clear yet.
8
SPEAKER_00
or the go-to-market strategy isn t clear, there s usually like, it s very early on that some of these things haven t been hashed out, which is okay.
8
SPEAKER_00
So the way I like to think about it is like, if this company s successful, will this be a multi-billion slash trillion dollar market, you know, or company?
8
SPEAKER_00
And so that s definitely a lens that I use.
8
SPEAKER_01
What s pre-seed?
8
SPEAKER_01
What are the different stages?
8
SPEAKER_01
And what s the most exciting stage?
8
SPEAKER_01
And what s, or no, what s interesting about every stage, I guess?
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, so pre-seed is usually when you re just starting out, you ve maybe raised the friends and family round, so you ve raised some money from people you know, and you re getting ready to take your first institutional check-in, like first check from an investor.
8
SPEAKER_00
I love the stage.
8
SPEAKER_00
There s a lot of uncertainty.
8
SPEAKER_00
Some investors really don t like the stage because the financial models aren t there.
8
SPEAKER_00
Often the teams aren t even like formed really, really early.
8
SPEAKER_00
But to me, it s like a magical stage because it s the time when there s so much conviction, so much belief, almost delusional, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
And there s a little bit of naivete around
8
SPEAKER_00
with founders at this stage, and I just love it.
8
SPEAKER_00
It s contagious.
8
SPEAKER_00
And I love that I can, often they re first-time founders, not always, but often they re first-time founders, and I can share my experience as a founder myself, and I can empathize, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
And I can almost, I create a safe ground where, because, you know, you have to be careful what you tell your investors, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
And I will often like say, I ve been in your shoes as a founder.
8
SPEAKER_00
You can tell me if it s challenging.
8
SPEAKER_00
You can tell me what you re struggling with.
8
SPEAKER_00
It s okay to vent.
8
SPEAKER_00
So I create that safe ground.
8
SPEAKER_00
And I think that s the superpower.
8
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I guess you have to figure out if this kind of person is gonna be able to ride the roller coaster of many pivots and challenges and all that kind of stuff.
8
SPEAKER_01
And if the space of ideas they re working in is interesting, like the way they think about the world.
8
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, because if it s successful, the thing they end up with might be very different, the reason it s successful.
8
SPEAKER_00
Actually, you know, I was going to say the third, so the technology is one aspect, the market or the idea, right, is the second, and the third is the founder, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
Is this somebody who I believe has conviction, is a hustler, you know, is going to
8
SPEAKER_00
overcome obstacles.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I think that is going to be a great leader, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
Like as a startup, as a founder, you re often, you are the first person and your role is to bring amazing people around you to build this thing.
8
SPEAKER_00
And so you re an evangelist, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
So how good are you going to be at that?
8
SPEAKER_00
So I try to evaluate that too.
8
SPEAKER_01
You also, in the tweet thread about it, mentioned, is this a known concept?
8
SPEAKER_01
Random rich dudes, RRDS.
8
SPEAKER_01
And saying that there should be random rich women, I guess.
8
SPEAKER_01
What s the dudes version of, the women version of dudes?
8
SPEAKER_01
Ladies, I don t know.
8
SPEAKER_01
Is this a technical term?
8
SPEAKER_01
Is this known?
8
SPEAKER_01
Random rich dudes?
8
SPEAKER_00
Well, I didn t make that up, but I was at this capital camp, which is a get-together for investors of all types.
8
SPEAKER_00
And there must have been maybe 400 or so attendees.
8
SPEAKER_00
Maybe 20 were women.
8
SPEAKER_00
It was just very disproportionately male-dominated, which I m used to.
8
SPEAKER_01
I think you re used to this kind of thing.
8
SPEAKER_00
I m used to it, but it s still surprising.
8
SPEAKER_00
And as I m raising money for this fund, so my fund partner is a guy called Rob May, who s done this before.
8
SPEAKER_00
So I m new to the investing world, but he s done this before.
8
SPEAKER_00
Most of our investors in the fund are these, I mean, awesome, I m super grateful to them, random just rich guys.
8
SPEAKER_00
I m like, where are the rich women?
8
SPEAKER_00
So I m really adamant in both investing in women-led AI companies, but I also would love to have women investors be part of my fund because I think that s how we drive change.
8
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, so that takes time, of course, but there s been quite a lot of progress.
8
SPEAKER_01
But yeah, for the next Mark Zuckerberg to be a woman and all that kind of stuff, because that s just like a huge number of wealth generated by women and then controlled by women and then allocated by women and all that kind of stuff.
8
SPEAKER_01
And then beyond just women, just broadly across all different measures of diversity and so on.
8
SPEAKER_01
Let me ask you to put on your wise sage hat.
8
SPEAKER_01
So we already gave advice on startups, it s just advice.
8
SPEAKER_01
for women, but in general, advice for folks in high school or college today, how to have a career they can be proud of, how to have a life they can be proud of.
8
SPEAKER_01
I suppose you have to give this kind of advice to your kids.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, well here s the number one advice that I give to my kids.
8
SPEAKER_00
My daughter s now 19, by the way, and my son s 13 1⁄2, so they re not little kids anymore.
8
SPEAKER_00
Does it break your heart?
8
SPEAKER_00
It does!
8
SPEAKER_00
They re awesome.
8
SPEAKER_00
They re my best friends.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I think the number one advice I would share is embark on a journey without attaching to outcomes.
8
SPEAKER_00
And enjoy the journey, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
So, you know, we often were so obsessed with the end goal
8
SPEAKER_00
A, that doesn t allow us to be open to different endings of a journey or a story.
8
SPEAKER_00
So you become so fixated on a particular path.
8
SPEAKER_00
You don t see the beauty in the other alternative path.
8
SPEAKER_00
And then you forget to enjoy the journey because you re just so fixated on the goal.
8
SPEAKER_00
And I ve been guilty of that for many, many years of my life.
8
SPEAKER_00
And I m now trying to make the shift of, no, no, no.
8
SPEAKER_00
Again, trust that things are gonna work out and it ll be amazing and maybe even exceed your dreams.
8
SPEAKER_00
But you have to be open to that.
8
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, taking a leap into all kinds of things.
8
SPEAKER_01
I think you tweeted like you went on vacation by yourself or something like this.
8
SPEAKER_00
I know.
8
SPEAKER_01
And just going, just taking the leap, doing it.
8
SPEAKER_00
Totally, doing it.
8
SPEAKER_01
And enjoying it, enjoying the moment, enjoying the weeks, enjoying not looking at some kind of career ladder next step and so on.
8
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, there s something to that, like over planning too.
8
SPEAKER_01
I m surrounded by a lot of people that kind of, so I don t plan.
8
SPEAKER_00
You don t?
8
SPEAKER_01
No.
8
SPEAKER_00
Do you not do goal setting?
8
SPEAKER_01
My goal setting is very like, I like the affirmations, it s very, it s almost, I don t know how to put it into words, but it s a little bit like,
8
SPEAKER_01
what my heart yearns for, kind of.
8
SPEAKER_01
And I guess in the space of emotions, more than in the space of like, this will be, like in the rational space.
8
SPEAKER_01
I just try to picture a world that I would like to be in, and that world is not clearly pictured, it s mostly in the emotional world.
8
SPEAKER_01
I mean, I think about that from robots,
8
SPEAKER_01
I have this desire, I ve had it my whole life to, well, it took different shapes, but I think once I discovered AI, the desire was to, I think in the context of this conversation could be easily, easier described as basically a social robotics company.
8
SPEAKER_01
And that s something I dreamed of doing.
8
SPEAKER_01
And well, there s a lot of complexity to that story, but that s the only thing, honestly, I dream of doing.
8
SPEAKER_01
So I imagine a world that
8
SPEAKER_01
that I could help create, but it s not, there s no steps along the way.
8
SPEAKER_01
And I think I m just kind of stumbling around and following happiness and working my ass off in almost random, like an ant does in random directions.
8
SPEAKER_01
But a lot of people, a lot of successful people around me say that you should have a plan, you should have a clear goal.
8
SPEAKER_01
You have a goal at the end of the month, you have a goal at the end of the year.
8
SPEAKER_01
I don t, I don t, I don t.
8
SPEAKER_01
There s a balance to be struck, of course, but there s something to be said about really making sure that you re living life to the fullest, that goals can actually get in the way of.
8
SPEAKER_00
So one of the best, kind of most, what do you call it when it challenges your brain, what do you call it?
8
SPEAKER_01
The only thing that comes to mind, and this is me saying is a mindfuck, but yes.
8
SPEAKER_00
Okay, okay, maybe, okay, something like that.
8
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
8
SPEAKER_00
Super inspiring talk.
8
SPEAKER_00
Kenneth Stanley, he was at OpenAI, he just left, and he has a book called Why Greatness Can t Be Planned, and it s actually an AI book.
8
SPEAKER_00
And he s done all these experiments that basically show that when you over-optimize
9
SPEAKER_02
Like, the trade-off is you re less creative, right?
9
SPEAKER_02
And to create true greatness and truly creative solutions to problems, you can t over-plan it.
9
SPEAKER_02
You can t.
9
SPEAKER_02
And I thought that was – and so he generalizes it beyond AI, and he talks about how we apply that in our personal life and our organizations and our companies, which are over-KPI d, right?
9
SPEAKER_02
Like, look at any company in the world, and it s all like, these are the goals, these are the –
9
SPEAKER_02
weekly goals, and the sprints, and then the quarterly goals, blah, blah, blah.
9
SPEAKER_02
And he just shows with a lot of his AI experiments that that s not how you create truly game-changing ideas.
9
SPEAKER_02
So there you go.
9
SPEAKER_02
You should interview Kenneth, he s awesome.
9
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, there s a balance, of course.
9
SPEAKER_00
Many moments of genius will not come from planning and goals, but
9
SPEAKER_00
you still have to build factories, and you still have to manufacture, and you still have to deliver, and there s still deadlines, and all that kind of stuff, and for that, it s good to have goals.
9
SPEAKER_02
I do goal setting with my kids.
9
SPEAKER_02
We all have our goals, but I think we re starting to morph into more of these bigger picture goals, and not obsess about, I don t know, it s hard.
9
SPEAKER_00
Well, I honestly think, especially with kids, it s much better to have a plan, and have goals, and so on, because you have to learn the muscle of what it feels like to get stuff done.
9
SPEAKER_00
But I think once you learn that, there s flexibility for me.
9
SPEAKER_00
Because I spent most of my life with goal setting and so on.
9
SPEAKER_00
So I ve gotten good with grades and school.
9
SPEAKER_00
I mean, school, if you want to be successful at school, I mean, the kind of stuff in high school and college that kids have to do.
9
SPEAKER_00
in terms of managing their time and getting so much stuff done.
9
SPEAKER_00
It s like, you know, taking five, six, seven classes in college, they re like, that would break the spirit of most humans if they took one of them later in life.
9
SPEAKER_00
It s like really difficult stuff, especially in engineering curricula.
9
SPEAKER_00
So I think you have to learn that skill, but once you learn it, you can maybe, because you can be a little bit on autopilot and use that momentum.
9
SPEAKER_00
and then allow yourself to be lost in the flow of life.
9
SPEAKER_00
Or also give, I work pretty hard to allow myself to have the freedom to do that.
9
SPEAKER_00
That s a tricky freedom to have.
9
SPEAKER_00
Because a lot of people get lost in the rat race.
9
SPEAKER_00
And they also, financially, whenever you get a raise,
9
SPEAKER_00
they ll get like a bigger house or something like this.
9
SPEAKER_00
I put very, so like you re always trapped in this race.
9
SPEAKER_00
I put a lot of emphasis on living like below my means always.
9
SPEAKER_00
And so there s a lot of freedom to do whatever.
9
SPEAKER_00
whatever the heart desires.
9
SPEAKER_00
But everyone has to decide what s the right thing for them.
9
SPEAKER_00
For some people, having a lot of responsibilities, like a house they can barely afford, or having a lot of kids, the responsibility side of that really helps them get their shit together.
9
SPEAKER_00
Like, all right, I need to be really focused.
9
SPEAKER_00
Some of the most successful people I know have kids, and the kids bring out the best in them.
9
SPEAKER_00
They make them more productive and less productive.
9
SPEAKER_02
It s accountability.
9
SPEAKER_02
It s an accountability thing, absolutely.
9
SPEAKER_00
And almost something to actually live and fight and work for, like having a family.
9
SPEAKER_00
It s fascinating to see.
9
SPEAKER_00
Because you would think kids would be a hit on productivity, but they re not, for a lot of really successful people.
9
SPEAKER_00
They re like an engine of,
9
SPEAKER_02
Right, efficiency, oh my God.
9
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it s weird.
9
SPEAKER_00
I mean, it s beautiful, it s beautiful to see.
9
SPEAKER_00
And also social happiness.
9
SPEAKER_00
Speaking of which, what role do you think love plays in the human condition, love?
9
SPEAKER_02
I think love is, yeah, I think it s why we re all here.
9
SPEAKER_02
I think it would be very hard to live life without
9
SPEAKER_02
love in any of its forms, right?
9
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, that s the most beautiful of forms that human connection takes, right?
9
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, I feel like
9
SPEAKER_02
Everybody wants to feel loved, right?
9
SPEAKER_02
In one way or another, right?
9
SPEAKER_00
And to love.
9
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, and to love, too.
9
SPEAKER_02
Totally, yeah, I agree with that.
9
SPEAKER_00
Both of it.
9
SPEAKER_00
I m not even sure what feels better.
9
SPEAKER_00
Both, both are like that.
9
SPEAKER_01
To give love, too, yeah.
9
SPEAKER_00
And it is like we ve been talking about, an interesting question, whether some of that, whether one day we ll be able to love a toaster.
9
SPEAKER_00
It s some small,
9
SPEAKER_02
I wasn t quite thinking about that when I said like, yeah, like we all need love and good love.
9
SPEAKER_00
I was thinking about Brad Pitt and toasters.
9
SPEAKER_02
Toasters, great.
9
SPEAKER_00
All right, well, I think we started on love and ended on love.
9
SPEAKER_00
This was an incredible conversation, Rhonda, thank you so much.
9
SPEAKER_00
You re an incredible person.
9
SPEAKER_00
Thank you for everything you re doing in AI, in the space of just caring about humanity, human emotion, about love, and being an inspiration to a huge number of people in robotics, in AI, in science, in the world in general.
9
SPEAKER_00
So thank you for talking to me, it s an honor.
9
SPEAKER_02
Thank you for having me, and you know I m a big fan of yours as well, so it s been a pleasure.
9
SPEAKER_00
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Ronna L. Kalyubi.
9
SPEAKER_00
To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description.
9
SPEAKER_00
And now, let me leave you with some words from Helen Keller.
9
SPEAKER_00
The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched.
9
SPEAKER_00
They must be felt with the heart.
9
SPEAKER_00
Thank you for listening, and hope to see you next time.
9
you