Coming soon near you: Smartphones, fridges and cars with emotional intelligence

Illus­tra­tion: Affectiva

Wouldn’t You Like Alexa Bet­ter if It Knew When It Was Annoy­ing You? (IEEE Spectrum):

“What could your com­put­er, phone, or oth­er gad­get do dif­fer­ent­ly if it knew how you were feeling?

Rana el Kaliou­by, founder and CEO of Affec­ti­va, is con­sid­er­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ties of such a world…Soon, she says, “all of our devices will have emo­tion­al intelligence”—not just our phones, but “our refrig­er­a­tors, our cars.”

Ear­ly on, el Kaliou­by focused on build­ing smart tools for indi­vid­u­als with autism. She still thinks emo­tion­al intel­li­gence technology—or EI—will be a huge boon to this com­mu­ni­ty, poten­tial­ly pro­vid­ing a sort of emo­tion­al hear­ing aid.

It’ll also be a men­tal health­care aid, el Kaliou­by pre­dicts. She sees smart phones with EI as poten­tial­ly able to reg­u­lar­ly check a person’s men­tal state, pro­vid­ing ear­ly warn­ing of depres­sion, anx­i­ety, or oth­er prob­lems. “Peo­ple check their phones 15 times an hour. That’s a chance to under­stand that you are devi­at­ing from your baseline.”

Innovation in Context:

• Info­graph­ic on the Dig­i­tal Brain Health Mar­ket 2012–2020
• Info­graph­ic on Per­va­sive Neu­rotech­nol­o­gy: A Ground­break­ing Analy­sis of 10,000+ Patent Fil­ings Trans­form­ing Med­i­cine, Health, Enter­tain­ment and Business
• Neu­rotech­nol­o­gy can improve our lives…if we first address these Pri­va­cy and Informed Con­sent issues
• Five rea­sons the future of brain enhance­ment is dig­i­tal, per­va­sive and (hope­ful­ly) bright
• Want a music sys­tem that lifts you up when you’re feel­ing down? Meet this audio head­set with bio-sig­nal sen­sors (key neu­rotech patent #48)