I'm hopeful but wary of "empathic" AI | nicole@web

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2024-05-07 09:30:07

A couple of months ago, one of my friends told me about a startup called Hume. I was primed to be skeptical, except that I trust this friend to have a somewhat balanced perspective on this topic. He'd talked to some people there and read their site and generally felt a good vibe about them and the mission.

Their mission is to build AI that will "amplify human well-being" through understanding language and expression. When I first saw it, their focus appeared to be measurement. You can transcribe speech, measure vocal and facial expressions, and extract subtleties of expressive language. Lots of impressive research behind it!

My first impression of the product was dread. Emotion is core to our humanity1, and there's a lot of ill that can be done by manipulating it. Imagine an advertising ecosystem where ads are targeted not only on your interests, but also your current emotional state.

My second impression of the product was hope and optimism. Being able to computationally understand emotion gives us new options for accessibility technology.