Podcast appearances and mentions of alan cowen

Alan Cowen is the cofounder and CEO of Hume, a company building voice-to-voice foundation models. They recently raised their $50M Series B from Union Square Ventures, Nat Friedman, Daniel Gross, and others. Alan's favorite book: 1984 (Author: George Orwell)(00:01) Introduction(00:06) Defining Voice-to-Voice Foundation Models(01:26) Historical Context: Handling Voice and Speech Understanding(03:54) Emotion Detection in Voice AI Models(04:33) Training Models to Recognize Human Emotion in Speech(07:19) Cultural Variations in Emotional Expressions(09:00) Semantic Space Theory in Emotion Recognition(12:11) Limitations of Basic Emotion Categories(15:50) Recognizing Blended Emotional States(20:15) Objectivity in Emotion Science(24:37) Practical Aspects of Deploying Voice AI Systems(28:17) Real-Time System Constraints and Latency(31:30) Advancements in Voice AI Models(32:54) Rapid-Fire Round--------Where to find Prateek Joshi: Newsletter: https://prateekjoshi.substack.com Website: https://prateekj.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prateek-joshi-91047b19 Twitter: https://twitter.com/prateekvjoshi 

In this bonus conversation, we feature a short (and new) excerpt from the full disagreement between last week's guests, Roman Yampolskiy and Alan Cowen. Here we apply the question of whether an AI can become conscious to Alan's company, Hume AI, and their chatbot EVI. For a different disagreement between Roman and Alan, check out the feature episode.

Today's disagreement is on Artificial Intelligence and Existential Risk. In this episode, we ask the most consequential question we've asked so far on this show: Do rapidly advancing AI systems pose an existential threat to humanity?To have this conversation, we've brought together two experts: a world class computer scientist and a Silicon Valley AI entrepreneur.Roman Yampolskiy is an associate professor of Computer Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Louisville. His most recent book is: AI: Unexplainable, Unpredictable, Uncontrollable.Alan Cowen is the Chief Executive Officer of Hume AI, a startup developing “emotionally intelligent AI.” His company recently raised $50M from top-tier venture capitalists to pursue the first fully empathic AI – an AI that can both understand our emotional states and replicate them. Alan has a PhD in computational psychology from Berkeley and previously worked at Google in the DeepMind AI lab.What did you think about this episode? Email us at podcast@thedisagreement.com. You can also DM us on Instagram @thedisagreementhq.

In this episode of Double Tap on YouTube, Steven and Shaun discuss the challenges of indoor and outdoor cooking, how AI could soon better understand our emotions, and how our friend Michael is getting on in his new setup.We start with our good friend Kayaker who joins the show to talk about how he enjoys good cookout during the summer months. He shares his experience with Weber grills, how he uses talking thermometers for food prep and Shaun shares how he uses an airfryer to cook at home safely.Next up another good friend of the show, Michael Babcock, joins the guys again to talk about his recent house move and what he's changed in his new setup. Michael has gone for a simple setup but a powerful one. He talks about the use of his Audient Evo 8 audio interface to help him navigate audio meetings and control his audio workflow for podcasting. Plus he shares top tips on how to set up even a large open garage space for recording and meetings.And finally Steven talks to Alan Cowen, behind a new company called Hume AI, that is creating a more personalized AI experience, not just the voice itself but also being able to recognize your emotions as you speak to it.Keep in touch and share your thoughts by emailing feedback@doubletaponair.com or call 1-877-803-4567 to leave us a voicemail. You can also find us across social media and of course on YouTube!

Alan Cowen is the CEO and founder Hume AI. Cowen joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss how his company is building emotional intelligence into AI systems. In this conversation, we examine why AI needs to learn how to read emotion, not just the literal text, and examine at how Hume does that with voice and facial expressions. In the first half, we discuss the theory of reading emotions and expressions and in the second half we discuss how it's applied. Tune in for a wide ranging conversation that touches on the study of emotion, using AI to speak with — and understand — animals, teaching bots to be far more emotionally intelligent, and how emotionally intelligent AI will change customer service, products, and even staple services today. We went long, but it's worth the full listen. --- Enjoying Big Technology Podcast? Please rate us five stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ in your podcast app of choice. For weekly updates on the show, sign up for the pod newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/6901970121829801984/ Want a discount for Big Technology on Substack? Here's 40% off for the first year: https://tinyurl.com/bigtechnology Questions? Feedback? Write to: bigtechnologypodcast@gmail.com

This AI can read emotions better than you can. It was created by Alan Cowen, the cofounder and CEO of Hume, an AI research lab developing models that can read your face and your voice with uncanny accuracy. Before starting Hume, Alan helped set up Google's research into affective computing and has a Ph.D. in computational psychology from Berkely. Hume's ultimate goal is to build AI models that can optimize for human well-being, and in this episode I sat down with Alan to understand how that might be possible.  We get into: What an emotion actually is Why traditional psychological theories of emotion are inadequate How Hume is able to model human emotions How Hume's API enables developers to build empathetic voice interfaces Applications of the model in customer service, gaming, and therapy Why Hume is designed to optimize for human well-being instead of engagement The ethical concerns around creating an AI that can interpret human emotions The future of psychology as a science  This is a must-watch for anyone interested in the science of emotion and the future of human-AI interactions. If you found this episode interesting, please like, subscribe, comment, and share!  Want even more? Sign up for Every to unlock our ultimate guide to prompting ChatGPT here: https://every.ck.page/ultimate-guide-to-prompting-chatgpt. It's usually only for paying subscribers, but you can get it here for free. To hear more from Dan Shipper: Subscribe to Every: https://every.to/subscribe  Follow him on X: https://twitter.com/danshipper  Timestamps: Dan tells Hume's empathetic AI model a secret: 00:00:00 Introduction: 00:01:13 What traditional psychology tells us about emotions: 00:10:17 Alan's radical approach to studying human emotion: 00:13:46  Methods that Hume's AI model uses to understand emotion: 00:16:46  How the model accounts for individual differences: 00:21:08 Dan's pet theory on why it's been hard to make progress in psychology: 00:27:19 The ways in which Alan thinks Hume can be used: 00:38:12 How Alan is thinking about the API v. consumer product question: 00:41:22 Ethical concerns around developing AI that can interpret human emotion: 00:44:42 Links to resources mentioned in the episode: Alan Cowen: @AlanCowen Hume: @hume_AI; hume.ai If you want to demo Hume: demo.hume.ai The nonprofit associated with Hume: Hume Initiative Lisa Feldman Barrett's book: How Emotions Are Made The TV series based on Paul Ekman's theory of emotion: Lie to Me

What if AI could understand what we, humans, are feeling? This week on Generative Now, Lightspeed Partner and host Michael Mignano talks to Alan Cowen, a researcher, founder and CEO of Hume AI. Hume creates empathic AI that learns our preferences from our vocal and facial expressions. Their goal is to maximize our happiness and quality of life. Hume is now announcing their API for EVI, Hume's Empathic Voice Interface.  The conversation covers Cowen's journey from being a researcher to founding Hume AI, the importance of emotional intelligence in AI for quality human interaction, and the potential to transform user experiences across various apps and devices. Plus, we ask how emphatic AI could impact the road to AGI. Episode Chapters(00:00) Introduction to Alan Cowen & Hume Demo  (01:38) The Genesis of Hume AI: From Research to Startup (04:01) Affective Computing and Its Impact (10:55) Hume AI: Bridging Human Emotions and Technology (15:37) The Future of AI: Beyond Text to Empathic Interactions (20:37) Introducing EVI: Empathic Voice Interface (21:46) Real-World Applications of Empathic AI  (31:19) The Potential Role of Empathic AI in Achieving AGI (36:53) Trust and Privacy (40:02) Opportunities with Hume AI (41:18) Closing Thoughts  Stay in touch: www.lsvp.com X: https://twitter.com/lightspeedvp LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/lightspeed-venture-partners/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lightspeedventurepartners/ Subscribe on your favorite podcast app: generativenow.co Email: generativenow@lsvp.com The content here does not constitute tax, legal, business or investment advice or an offer to provide such advice, should not be construed as advocating the purchase or sale of any security or investment or a recommendation of any company, and is not an offer, or solicitation of an offer, for the purchase or sale of any security or investment product. For more details please see lsvp.com/legal.

Alan Cowen, founder of Hume AI, an empathic AI research lab, joins @Ate-A-Pi to chat about the AI models developed by Hume that understand more than just language. These models can detect emotions in voices and faces and generate responses based on the detected emotions. — Recommended Podcast: Company Breakdowns Each episode of Company Breakdowns dives into S-1s and series B-and-beyond companies, interviewing founders and investors to break down the companies. First episode is on Rubrik - which just IPO'd. Coming up this season: Databricks, Reddit + more, Spotify Apple — FOLLOW ON X: @8teAPi (Ate) @AlanCowen (Alan) @hume_ai @TurpentineMedia — (00:00) Introduction to Hume and its AI models (08:26) Controlling emotions in vocalization (15:25) Alan Cowen's research on emotion (33:31) Semantic space theory and emotion definition (45:34) The tension between reason and emotion (52:48) Emotions in animals (1:01:37) The future of generating authentic video (01:10:35) The loss of information in virtual communication (01:18:28) Differentiating Hume from other AI models, and the future of Hume

This Week in Startups is brought to you by… LinkedIn Jobs. A business is only as strong as its people, and every hire matters. Go to LinkedIn.com/TWIST to post your first job for free. Terms and conditions apply. Vanta. Compliance and security shouldn't be a deal-breaker for startups to win new business. Vanta makes it easy for companies to get a SOC 2 report fast. TWiST listeners can get $1,000 off for a limited time at http://www.vanta.com/twist Hubspot for Startups. Join thousands of companies that are growing better with HubSpot for Startups. Learn more and get extra benefits for being a TWiST listener now at https://www.hubspot.com/startups * Todays show: Hume AI's Alan Cowen joins Jason to demo Hume AI's Empathic Voice Interface (6:08), Measurement API (16:20), and discuss the future implications of this tech, both positive and negative (44:14). * Timestamps: (0:00) Hume AI's Alan Cowen joins Jason (3:01) Hume AI and the role of AI in understanding human emotions (6:08) Hume AI's Empathic Voice Interface (EVI) and its responsiveness to human emotions (8:27) LinkedIn Jobs - Post your first job for free at https://linkedin.com/twist (9:55) The components in speech that Hume AI studies and its application across different cultures (16:20) Hume AI's Measurement API and its design for real-time emotion and expression analysis (21:16) Vanta - Get $1000 off your SOC 2 at http://www.vanta.com/twist (22:07) What AI can reveal about a person based on their expressions (24:12) The impact on customer service and security sectors (27:24) Hume AI's comedy bot and emotional detection capabilities (36:08) Hubspot for Startups - Learn more and get extra benefits for being a TWiST listener now at https://www.hubspot.com/startups. Also, be sure to visit https://bit.ly/hubspot-ai-report (37:01) Hume AI's comedy bot / roast functionality (44:11) The future implications, both positive and negative, of emotionally intelligent AI on society .* Check out Hume AI: https://www.hume.ai * Follow Alan: X: https://twitter.com/alancowen LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alan-cowen * Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp * Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis * Thank you to our partners: (8:27) LinkedIn Jobs - Go to https://linkedIn.com/angel and post your first job for free. (21:16) Vanta - Get $1000 off your SOC 2 at http://www.vanta.com/twist (36:08) Hubspot for Startups - ****Learn more and get extra benefits for being a TWiST listener now at https://www.hubspot.com/startups. Also, be sure to visit https://bit.ly/hubspot-ai-report * Great 2023 interviews: Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland * Check out Jason's suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis * Follow TWiST: Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups * Subscribe to the Founder University Podcast: https://www.founder.university/podcast

In this episode, Nathan sits down with Alan Cowen, CEO and Chief Scientist at Hume AI, an emotional intelligence startup working on creating emotionally aware AI. SPONSORS: Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. Shopify powers 10% of ALL eCommerce in the US. And Shopify's the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and 1,000,000s of other entrepreneurs across 175 countries.From their all-in-one e-commerce platform, to their in-person POS system – wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify's got you covered. With free Shopify Magic, sell more with less effort by whipping up captivating content that converts – from blog posts to product descriptions using AI. Sign up for $1/month trial period: https://shopify.com/cognitive MasterClass https://masterclass.com/cognitive get two memberships for the price of 1 Learn from the best to become your best. Learn how to negotiate a raise with Chris Voss or manage your relationships with Esther Perel. Boost your confidence and find practical takeaways you can apply to your life and at work. If you own a business or are a team leader, use MasterClass to empower and create future-ready employees and leaders. Moment of Zen listeners will get two memberships for the price of one at https://masterclass.com/cognitive Omneky is an omnichannel creative generation platform that lets you launch hundreds of thousands of ad iterations that actually work customized across all platforms, with a click of a button. Omneky combines generative AI and real-time advertising data. Mention "Cog Rev" for 10% off. X/SOCIAL @labenz (Nathan) @AlanCowen (Alan) @eriktorenberg (Erik) @CogRev_Podcast LINKS: Hume: https://hume.ai/ TIMESTAMPS: (00:00) - Episode Preview (00:04:52) - How do you define happiness? How can AI make people happy? (00:08:40) - The striking experience of trying the Hume demo (00:09:16) - Building multimodal models using facial expressions, vocal signals, speech patterns (00:12:27) - How Hume's models have an advantage of LLMs when it comes to interpreting emotions (00:13:23) - Assembling diverse datasets of emotional judgments via surveys (00:15:27) - Sponsors: Shopify (00:22:00) - Across populations, what is common or different in people's judgement of facial expressions (00:26:00) - Interrater reliability for training data (00:30:48) - Sponsors: Omneky (00:33:20) - The unique labelling of “awe” across different cultures (00:36:23) - Customizing models for cultural emotional expression norms (00:41:13) - How they determined the set of emotions recognized by the model (00:42:50) - Schadenfreude as a unique example of semantic space research (00:49:00) - Custom models (00:52:42) - Using Hume in B2B contexts (00:59:49) - The cost comparison of having a human analyze emotions vs AI

The neuroscience of awe as an antidote to our stress response system In this series, Secure Relating in an Insecure World, we've covered tough topics head-on. It is, therefore, fitting that we close the series with something scientifically hopeful to help us stay in our secure selves so we can stay engaged and active as social advocates and not collapse in overwhelm. The science of this specific feeling of awe has garnered much attention for good reason.  Our guest today has spent decades exploring the sensation and documenting how to develop it in everyday life. We have all experienced these small moments that allow us to shift our mindset away from ourselves and into something so bigger. Co-hosts Sue Marriott and Dr. Ann Kelley discuss the power of awe with guest expert Dr. Dacher Keltner where they explore the science, the mystical and the hope of awe as an inspirational tool for collective healing. "You can be outdoors by yourself, you can be listening to an amazing passage of music, you can think about somebodywhose life really inspires you. You have this urge to connect, to be part of community, to be good to other people, to share with other people, to make the world and your community a little bit better - that tells us something fundamental about the DNA of Awe." - Dr. Dacher Keltner Time Stamps for Awe 2:15 - What is awe? 3:31 - Physiology during moments of awe 8:21 - One of Dr. Keltner's most striking discoveries about awe 8:57 - Understanding everyday awe 10:11 - The role of curiosity in awe 13:31 - The power of music 14:27 - The 8 wonders that bring us awe 21:20 - Collective effervescence 25:38 - Alan Cowen & Dacher Keltner's experiential maps 27:36 - Awe in animals 32:16 - How awe can sometimes lead you astray 40:17 - Using awe as a tool for younger generations Resources for today's episode on the feeling of "awe" DacherKeltner.com - Personal website full of research, books, videos, and other resources  Greater Good Science Center - Resource center with podcasts, quizzes, articles & videos  Science of Happiness - Podcast by the Great Good Network  AlanCowen.com - Visuals of mapping emotion You can purchase his most recent book, here!! About our Guest - Dr. Dacher Keltner Dr. Keltner is one of the world's foremost emotion scientists. He is a professor of psychology at UC Berkeley and the director of the Greater Good Science Center. He has over 200 scientific publications and six books, including Born to Be Good, The Compassionate Instinct, and The Power Paradox. He has written for many popular outlets, from The New York Times to Slate. He was also the scientific advisor behind Pixar's Inside Out, is involved with the education of healthcare providers and judges, and has consulted extensively for Google, Apple, and Pinterest, on issues related to emotion and well-being.     We support mental health access to those traditionally left out of mainstream healthcare and use a portion of the income we receive from corporate sponsors to do just that!  We can only do that with the help of our Patrons - joining as a TU Neuronerd Podsquad premium subscriber, you support this mission and get a dedicated ad-free feed plus occasional very cool and unique study opportunities, reading groups and who knows what else may come!  We invite you to join our community. Click here to join!  Click here to view today's episode on the power of awe with Dr. Dacher Keltner - Transcripts. Please consider giving to Mental Health Liberation We support mental health access to those traditionally left out of mainstream healthcare and use a portion of the income we receive from corporate sponsors to do just that!  We can only do that with the help of our Patrons – joining as a TU Neuronerd Podsquad premium subscriber, you support this mission and get a dedicated ad-free feed plus occasional very cool and unique study opportunities, reading groups,

The neuroscience of awe as an antidote to our stress response system In this series, Secure Relating in an Insecure World, we've covered tough topics head-on. It is, therefore, fitting that we close the series with something scientifically hopeful to help us stay in our secure selves so we can stay engaged and active as social advocates and not collapse in overwhelm. The science of this specific feeling of awe has garnered much attention for good reason.  Our guest today has spent decades exploring the sensation and documenting how to develop it in everyday life. We have all experienced these small moments that allow us to shift our mindset away from ourselves and into something so bigger. Co-hosts Sue Marriott and Dr. Ann Kelley discuss the power of awe with guest expert Dr. Dacher Keltner where they explore the science, the mystical and the hope of awe as an inspirational tool for collective healing. "You can be outdoors by yourself, you can be listening to an amazing passage of music, you can think about somebodywhose life really inspires you. You have this urge to connect, to be part of community, to be good to other people, to share with other people, to make the world and your community a little bit better - that tells us something fundamental about the DNA of Awe." - Dr. Dacher Keltner Time Stamps for Awe 2:15 - What is awe? 3:31 - Physiology during moments of awe 8:21 - One of Dr. Keltner's most striking discoveries about awe 8:57 - Understanding everyday awe 10:11 - The role of curiosity in awe 13:31 - The power of music 14:27 - The 8 wonders that bring us awe 21:20 - Collective effervescence 25:38 - Alan Cowen & Dacher Keltner's experiential maps 27:36 - Awe in animals 32:16 - How awe can sometimes lead you astray 40:17 - Using awe as a tool for younger generations Resources for today's episode on the feeling of "awe" DacherKeltner.com - Personal website full of research, books, videos, and other resources  Greater Good Science Center - Resource center with podcasts, quizzes, articles & videos  Science of Happiness - Podcast by the Great Good Network  AlanCowen.com - Visuals of mapping emotion You can purchase his most recent book, here!! About our Guest - Dr. Dacher Keltner Dr. Keltner is one of the world's foremost emotion scientists. He is a professor of psychology at UC Berkeley and the director of the Greater Good Science Center. He has over 200 scientific publications and six books, including Born to Be Good, The Compassionate Instinct, and The Power Paradox. He has written for many popular outlets, from The New York Times to Slate. He was also the scientific advisor behind Pixar's Inside Out, is involved with the education of healthcare providers and judges, and has consulted extensively for Google, Apple, and Pinterest, on issues related to emotion and well-being.     We support mental health access to those traditionally left out of mainstream healthcare and use a portion of the income we receive from corporate sponsors to do just that!  We can only do that with the help of our Patrons - joining as a TU Neuronerd Podsquad premium subscriber, you support this mission and get a dedicated ad-free feed plus occasional very cool and unique study opportunities, reading groups and who knows what else may come!  We invite you to join our community. Click here to join!  Click here for Awe - Dr. Dacher Keltner - Transcripts  Please consider giving to Mental Health Liberation We support mental health access to those traditionally left out of mainstream healthcare and use a portion of the income we receive from corporate sponsors to do just that!  We can only do that with the help of our Patrons – joining as a TU Neuronerd Podsquad premium subscriber, you support this mission and get a dedicated ad-free feed plus occasional very cool and unique study opportunities, reading groups, and unique surprises!

In today's episode of Category Visionaries, we speak with Alan Cowen, CEO and Founder of Hume AI, a research lab and technology startup that's raised Over $17 Million in funding, about how unchecked machine learning can lead very quickly to exploitation, and why we need to develop technology more in line with people's mental health. With algorithms targeted specifically for more positive behavioral outcomes, positive emotions and desirable life outcomes, Hume AI is charting a new course in the development of human-AI interaction. We speak with CEO and Founder Alan Cowen about his background education in psychology and being a pioneer in the field of data science and human emotion, his motivations for founding Hume AI and the risks of unchecked machine learning development for people's mental wellbeing, and how he sees the current frenzy surrounding AI technology developing in the years to come. Topics Discussed: Alan's background education in psychology, and being one of the people who brought data science to the study of human emotion  Experiences at Google's AI program and the decision for Alan to strike out on his own with a new company The potential risks of unchecked AI development and the risks of exploitation even when unintentional Why wellbeing-aware algorithms are an essential part of a healthy relationship with the technology we rely on every day The current media frenzy surrounding ChatGPT and similar language models, and what it means for AI in the future Where Alan believes AI should sit in our future society, and some practical suggestions for how we might get there.   Favorite book:  Human Compatible: Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Control

Join Hume AI CEO Dr. Alan Cowen, Dr. Yukiyasu Kamitani, Professor at the University of Kyoto and Head of the Department of Neuroinformatics at ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories, and host Matt Forte as they discuss the nature of emotions in the human brain. Learn how scientists are decoding the emotions evoked by thousands of videos from brain activity, and how scientists are scanning the brains of sleeping subjects and decoding the visual content of their dreams. Grab a friend and set out on a journey with the new season of The Feelings Lab, a podcast series from Hume AI. We're exploring the frontier of emotion science and its lessons for creating a more empathic future. We'll discover how scientists and technologists are seeking to bring empathy to social media, robots, digital art, and more, building equity and compassion into these ubiquitous AI systems. Join our expert hosts and emotionally-attuned guests each week to learn how empathic technologies are shaping the modern world. Subscribe, and tell a friend to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts! Apple: https://apple.co/3iaXAO7 Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3zM0lvh Check us out at: https://hume.ai LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/hume-ai YouTube: https://bit.ly/3zS3Ekq Twitter: @hume_ai and @alancowen If you have any questions you'd like answered in an upcoming episode, feel free to send them to thefeelingslab@hume.ai. About Hume AI: Hume AI is an AI research lab and technology company offering the tools to build expression understanding and empathy into modern technology. Our mission is to ensure that the future is built to serve our emotions, so that as AI gets smarter, it remains aligned with our goals.

We queried ChatGPT: Is empathy important in business success? ChatGPT Response: Yes, empathy can be an important factor in business success. Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of others, and it can be beneficial in many ways in the business world. …Empathy can help build strong relationships with clients and customers. …help foster a positive work environment. …help in problem-solving and decision-making. We asked ChatGPT: Do you have “empathy”? ChatGPT Response: As an AI language model, I do not have emotions or personal experiences, so I cannot feel empathy in the same way that a human being can. However…I can respond to questions about emotions and provide information about how people typically experience empathy. We asked ChatGPT for empathy-relevant movie and TV character quotes: ChatGPT Response: ** “The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.” [Moulin Rouge, 2001 film] ** “To understand all is to forgive all.” [Les Misérables, 2012 film] ** “Empathy is about finding echoes of another person in yourself.” [Her, 2013 film] We'll ask Minter Dial, Grin Lord, Don Schuerman and Dr. Alan Cowen for their take on The Future of Empathy vs AI: Taking Care of Business or How Does It Feel?

We queried ChatGPT: Is empathy important in business success? ChatGPT Response: Yes, empathy can be an important factor in business success. Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of others, and it can be beneficial in many ways in the business world. …Empathy can help build strong relationships with clients and customers. …help foster a positive work environment. …help in problem-solving and decision-making. We asked ChatGPT: Do you have “empathy”? ChatGPT Response: As an AI language model, I do not have emotions or personal experiences, so I cannot feel empathy in the same way that a human being can. However…I can respond to questions about emotions and provide information about how people typically experience empathy. We asked ChatGPT for empathy-relevant movie and TV character quotes: ChatGPT Response: ** “The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.” [Moulin Rouge, 2001 film] ** “To understand all is to forgive all.” [Les Misérables, 2012 film] ** “Empathy is about finding echoes of another person in yourself.” [Her, 2013 film] We'll ask Minter Dial, Grin Lord, Don Schuerman and Dr. Alan Cowen for their take on The Future of Empathy vs AI: Taking Care of Business or How Does It Feel?

We queried ChatGPT: Is empathy important in business success? ChatGPT Response: Yes, empathy can be an important factor in business success. Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of others, and it can be beneficial in many ways in the business world. …Empathy can help build strong relationships with clients and customers. …help foster a positive work environment. …help in problem-solving and decision-making. We asked ChatGPT: Do you have “empathy”? ChatGPT Response: As an AI language model, I do not have emotions or personal experiences, so I cannot feel empathy in the same way that a human being can. However…I can respond to questions about emotions and provide information about how people typically experience empathy. We asked ChatGPT for empathy-relevant movie and TV character quotes: ChatGPT Response: ** “The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.” [Moulin Rouge, 2001 film] ** “To understand all is to forgive all.” [Les Misérables, 2012 film] ** “Empathy is about finding echoes of another person in yourself.” [Her, 2013 film] We'll ask Minter Dial, Grin Lord, Don Schuerman and Dr. Alan Cowen for their take on The Future of Empathy vs AI: Taking Care of Business or How Does It Feel?

Minter Dialogue with Dr Alan Cowen Dr Alan Cowen is the CEO and Chief Scientist at Hume AI, a science-backed expression API platform for researchers and developers, whose mission is to align science and technology with human well-being. In this conversation, we discuss his background, including 5 years working at Google, doing scientific research on AI, the Hume AI project and business model, the state of play in understanding our emotions and creating artificial empathy. A perfect topic for any interested in how AI will play an important part in tending to our well being. If you've got comments or questions you'd like to see answered, send your email or audio file to nminterdial@gmail.com; or you can find the show notes and comment on minterdial.com. If you liked the podcast, please take a moment to rate/review the show on RateThisPodcast. Otherwise, you can find me @mdial on Twitter.

Join Hume AI CEO Dr. Alan Cowen, Wisdom 2.0 founder and Wisdom Ventures co-founder Soren Gordhamer, and host Matt Forte as they discuss one of the greatest modern challenges: how to promote wisdom and mindfulness in a world swarming with technology that demands our attention. Grab a friend and set out on a journey with the new season of The Feelings Lab, a podcast series from Hume AI. We're exploring the frontier of emotion science and its lessons for creating a more empathic future. We'll discover how scientists and technologists are seeking to bring empathy to social media, robots, digital art, and more, building equity and compassion into these ubiquitous AI systems. Join our expert hosts and emotionally-attuned guests each week to learn how empathic technologies are shaping the modern world. Subscribe, and tell a friend to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts! Apple: https://apple.co/3iaXAO7 Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3zM0lvh Check us out at: https://hume.ai LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/hume-ai YouTube: https://bit.ly/3zS3Ekq If you have any questions you'd like answered in an upcoming episode, feel free to send them to thefeelingslab@hume.ai. About Hume AI: Hume AI is an AI research lab and technology company offering the tools to build expression understanding and empathy into modern technology. Our mission is to ensure that the future is built to serve our emotions, so that as AI gets smarter, it remains aligned with our goals.

Are expressions innate? Join Hume AI CEO Dr. Alan Cowen, University of Amsterdam professor Dr. Disa Sauter, and host Matt Forte as they discuss the origins of our emotional expressions. Grab a friend and set out on a journey with the new season of The Feelings Lab, a podcast series from Hume AI. We're exploring the frontier of emotion science and its lessons for creating a more empathic future. We'll discover how scientists and technologists are seeking to bring empathy to social media, robots, digital art, and more, building equity and compassion into these ubiquitous AI systems. Join our expert hosts and emotionally-attuned guests each week to learn how empathic technologies are shaping the modern world. Subscribe, and tell a friend to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts! Apple: https://apple.co/3iaXAO7 Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3zM0lvh Check us out at: https://hume.ai LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/hume-ai YouTube: https://bit.ly/3zS3Ekq If you have any questions you'd like answered in an upcoming episode, feel free to send them to thefeelingslab@hume.ai. About Hume AI: Hume AI is an AI research lab and technology company. Our mission is to ensure that future technology is built to serve our emotions, ensuring that as AI gets smarter it remains aligned with our goals.

Join Hume AI CEO Dr. Alan Cowen, thymia CEO Dr. Emilia Molimpakis, and host Matt Forte as they discuss “The Future of Mental Health Assessment." Today, a clinical diagnosis is largely the result of a conversation, nonverbal signals, and a doctor's intuition. Can technology help us improve, but not replace, this crucial element of subjectivity? We discuss how machine learning tools to understand vocal and nonverbal communication can revolutionize mental health assessment, helping us more reliably measure symptoms of pain, major depression, cognitive impairment, and other disorders, and paving the way for more targeted and holistic treatments. Grab a friend and set out on a journey with the new season of The Feelings Lab, a podcast series from Hume AI. We're exploring the frontier of emotion science and its lessons for creating a more empathic future. We'll discover how scientists and technologists are seeking to bring empathy to social media, robots, digital art, and more, building equity and compassion into these ubiquitous AI systems. Join our expert hosts and emotionally-attuned guests each week to learn how empathic technologies are shaping the modern world. Subscribe, and tell a friend to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts! Apple: https://apple.co/3iaXAO7 Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3zM0lvh Check us out at: https://hume.ai LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/hume-ai YouTube: https://bit.ly/3zS3Ekq If you have any questions you'd like answered in an upcoming episode, feel free to send them to thefeelingslab@hume.ai. About Hume AI: Hume AI is an AI research lab and technology company. Our mission is to ensure that future technology is built to serve our emotions, ensuring that as AI gets smarter it remains aligned with our goals.

Join Hume AI CEO Dr. Alan Cowen, psychologist Dr. Daniel Dukes, and host Matt Forte as they discuss “The Emotion Revolution," and how the shifting emphasis of the past century of psychological inquiry—on behavior, cognition, and now, emotion—has been marked by advances in our understanding of how human learn. Grab a friend and set out on a journey with the new season of The Feelings Lab, a podcast series from Hume AI. We're exploring the frontier of emotion science and its lessons for creating a more empathic future. We'll discover how scientists and technologists are seeking to bring empathy to social media, robots, digital art, and more, building equity and compassion into these ubiquitous AI systems. Join our expert hosts and emotionally-attuned guests each week to learn how empathic technologies are shaping the modern world. Subscribe, and tell a friend to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts! Apple: https://apple.co/3iaXAO7 Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3zM0lvh Check us out at: https://hume.ai LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/hume-ai YouTube: https://bit.ly/3zS3Ekq If you have any questions you'd like answered in an upcoming episode, feel free to send them to thefeelingslab@hume.ai. About Hume AI: Hume AI is an AI research lab and technology company. Our mission is to ensure that future technology is built to serve our emotions, ensuring that as AI gets smarter it remains aligned with our goals.

Join Dr. Alan Cowen, founder of Hume AI, Dr. Dacher Keltner, founding director of the Greater Good Science Center and Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and host Matt Forte as they discuss Myths About Emotion Science. Does the face ‘reveal our emotions'? What does science really say about how people express their feelings? We discuss the real complexity and nuance of facial and vocal expressions, and revisit what Darwin meant when he said that expressions are “purposeless.” The Feelings Lab, presented by Hume AI, explores the frontier of emotion science and its lessons for creating a more empathic future. We'll discover how scientists and technologists are integrating empathy into social media tools, robots, digital art, and more, with the goal of building equity and compassion into these ubiquitous AI systems. Each week, join our panel of expert hosts, and emotionally attuned guests, to learn how empathic technologies are shaping the modern world. Subscribe, and tell a friend to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts! Apple: https://apple.co/3iaXAO7 Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3zM0lvh Check us out at: https://hume.ai LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/hume-ai YouTube: https://bit.ly/3zS3Ekq Twitter: @hume__ai If you have any questions you'd like answered in an upcoming episode, feel free to send them to thefeelingslab@hume.ai. About Hume AI: Hume AI is an AI research lab and technology company. Our mission is to ensure that future technology is built to serve our emotions, ensuring that as AI gets smarter it remains aligned with our goals.

Join Hume AI CEO Dr. Alan Cowen, Brand Bastion CEO Jenny Wolfram, and host Matt Forte as they discuss Trust and Safety in Online Conversations. How can we give people the trust in one another, and the safety from threats and harassment, to speak freely online? How can we ensure that people's messages are being heard by organizations that can make a difference? Amid the rise in online communities, we consider the essential role that AI will play in empowering authentic voices, from classifying harmful content to delivering care to the vulnerable. Conversational AI has the promise of enabling organizations to engage with communities in a way that is authentic, receptive, and fluid, supporting a democracy of ideas. The Feelings Lab, presented by Hume AI, explores the frontier of emotion science and its lessons for creating a more empathic future. We'll discover how scientists and technologists are integrating empathy into social media tools, robots, digital art, and more, with the goal of building equity and compassion into these ubiquitous AI systems. Each week, join our panel of expert hosts, and emotionally attuned guests, to learn how empathic technologies are shaping the modern world. Subscribe, and tell a friend to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts! Apple: https://apple.co/3iaXAO7 Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3zM0lvh Check us out at: https://hume.ai LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/hume-ai YouTube: https://bit.ly/3zS3Ekq Twitter: @hume__ai If you have any questions you'd like answered in an upcoming episode, feel free to send them to thefeelingslab@hume.ai. About Hume AI: Hume AI is an AI research lab and technology company. Our mission is to ensure that future technology is built to serve our emotions, ensuring that as AI gets smarter it remains aligned with our goals.

Join Hume AI CEO Dr. Alan Cowen, Cogito CEO Josh Feast and host Matt Forte as they discuss the potential for AI tools to bring more empathy to customer service. Customer service conversations can affect our quality of life, so whether we feel heard rightly determines our perception of brands. The Feelings Lab, presented by Hume AI, explores the frontier of emotion science and its lessons for creating a more empathic future. We'll discover how scientists and technologists are integrating empathy into social media tools, robots, digital art, and more, with the goal of building equity and compassion into these ubiquitous AI systems. Each week, join our panel of expert hosts, and emotionally attuned guests, to learn how empathic technologies are shaping the modern world. Subscribe, and tell a friend to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts! Apple: https://apple.co/3iaXAO7 Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3zM0lvh Check us out at: https://hume.ai LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/hume-ai YouTube: https://bit.ly/3zS3Ekq Twitter: @hume__ai If you have any questions you'd like answered in an upcoming episode, feel free to send them to thefeelingslab@hume.ai. About Hume AI: Hume AI is an AI research lab and technology company. Our mission is to ensure that future technology is built to serve our emotions, ensuring that as AI gets smarter it remains aligned with our goals.

Can AI teach itself to improve our well-being? Join Dr. Alan Cowen, CEO of Hume AI, Dr. Dacher Keltner, professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley and founding director of the Greater Good Science Center, and podcast host Matt Forte as they discuss how the future of technology hinges on the measurement of human well-being. The Feelings Lab, presented by Hume AI, explores the frontier of emotion science and its lessons for creating a more empathic future. We'll discover how scientists and technologists are integrating empathy into social media tools, robots, digital art, and more, with the goal of building equity and compassion into these ubiquitous AI systems. Each week, join our panel of expert hosts, and emotionally attuned guests, to learn how empathic technologies are shaping the modern world. Subscribe, and tell a friend to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts! Apple: https://apple.co/3iaXAO7 Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3zM0lvh Check us out at: https://hume.ai LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/hume-ai YouTube: https://bit.ly/3zS3Ekq Twitter: @hume__ai If you have any questions you'd like answered in an upcoming episode, feel free to send them to thefeelingslab@hume.ai. About Hume AI: Hume AI is an AI research lab and technology company. Our mission is to ensure that future technology is built to serve our emotions, ensuring that as AI gets smarter it remains aligned with our goals.

Join Hume AI CEO Dr. Alan Cowen and podcast host Matt Forte as they venture through the best pod-listener questions we've received so far this season: a veritable emotion science "mailbag." Can people who understand the emotions of others better interpret emotions conveyed through music? How should we responsibly address the ethics around emotion AI data collection and usage? Is there a healthy level of emotional expressivity conducive to emotional well-being? Are video calls bad for brainstorming? Do lobsters or hermit crabs have feelings? Tune in to hear the answer to these questions and more. **Stories discussed in this episode** Research shows the role empathy may play in music https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/05/220511102807.htm Why video calls are bad for brainstorming https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-01183-3 The inner life of a lobster: Do invertebrates have emotions? https://bigthink.com/life/do-invertebrates-have-emotions/ --- The Feelings Lab, presented by Hume AI, explores the frontier of emotion science and its lessons for creating a more empathic future. We'll discover how scientists and technologists are integrating empathy into social media tools, robots, digital art, and more, with the goal of building equity and compassion into these ubiquitous AI systems. Each week, join our panel of expert hosts, and emotionally attuned guests, to learn how empathic technologies are shaping the modern world. Subscribe, and tell a friend to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts! Apple: https://apple.co/3iaXAO7 Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3zM0lvh Check us out at: https://hume.ai LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/hume-ai YouTube: https://bit.ly/3zS3Ekq If you have any questions you'd like answered in an upcoming episode, feel free to send them to thefeelingslab@hume.ai. About Hume AI: Hume AI is an AI research lab and technology company. Our mission is to ensure that future technology is built to serve our emotions, ensuring that as AI gets smarter it remains aligned with our goals.

Can machines experience emotions? They might, according to Hume AI, an AI research lab and technology company that aims to “ensure artificial intelligence is built to serve human goals and emotional well-being.” So how can AI genuinely understand how we are feeling, and respond appropriately? On this episode of NVIDIA's AI Podcast, host Noah Kravitz spoke with Alan Cowen, founder of Hume AI and The Hume Initiative. Cowen — a former researcher at Google who holds a Ph.D. in Psychology from UC Berkeley — talks about the latest work at the intersection of computing and human emotion.

On this podcast Jason Stoughton is joined by Alan Cowen, CEO and Chief Scientist, at Hume AI. As AI progresses, both in terms of what it can do and how widely it is deployed, the ability for AI to understand and empathize with our emotions is still a glaring hole in AI's capabilities. On this podcast Jason and Alan talk about the state of the technology, unpack the hopes and dreams and fears of an AI that understands, and can potentially manipulate, our emotions and how Hume is not only leading the way in advancing AI's capabilities in this area but is also leading the way in ensuring that AI  should service human well being above all else. If you like what you hear subscribe to my podcast, follow me on twitter @thepulseofai or reach out on linkedin.

Join Hume AI CEO Dr. Alan Cowen, Dr. Daniel Barron, Harvard Medical School psychiatrist and Director of the Pain Intervention & Digital Research Program, and Matt Forte as they discuss pain and personalized medicine. Different people express and describe their pain differently, but how these signals are understood can have life-altering implications. We discuss the different kinds of pain: acute vs. chronic pain, central vs. peripheral, the enigma of phantom limb pain, and how physicians evaluate pain syndromes and their treatment. Can pain be measured objectively? Is there a role for quantitative tools in treating pain? Can AI help us reduce bias in how pain is diagnosed and treated? The Feelings Lab, presented by Hume AI, explores the frontier of emotion science and its lessons for creating a more empathic future. We'll discover how scientists and technologists are integrating empathy into social media tools, robots, digital art, and more, with the goal of building equity and compassion into these ubiquitous AI systems. Each week, join our panel of expert hosts, and emotionally attuned guests, to learn how empathic technologies are shaping the modern world. Subscribe, and tell a friend to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts! Apple: apple.co/3iaXAO7 Spotify: spoti.fi/3zM0lvh Check us out at: hume.ai LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/hume-ai YouTube: bit.ly/3zS3Ekq If you have any questions you'd like answered in an upcoming episode, feel free to send them to thefeelingslab@hume.ai. About Hume AI: Hume AI is a research lab and technology company. Our mission is to ensure that artificial intelligence is built to serve human goals and emotional well-being.

Join Dr. Alan Cowen, CEO of Hume, and dscout CEO Michael Winnick with host Matt Forte as they discuss Empathy and User Research. How can we foster empathy with users at the speed and scale needed to drive innovation in AI? How does empathy help researchers design products and product experiences? How can we get “out of the lab” to study the messy reality of user experience in the real world? How can technology strengthen human bonds and connections, not replace them? The Feelings Lab, presented by Hume AI, explores the frontier of emotion science and its lessons for creating a more empathic future. We'll discover how scientists and technologists are integrating empathy into social media tools, robots, digital art, and more, with the goal of building equity and compassion into these ubiquitous AI systems. Each week, join our panel of expert hosts, and emotionally attuned guests, to learn how empathic technologies are shaping the modern world. Subscribe, and tell a friend to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts! Apple: apple.co/3iaXAO7 Spotify: spoti.fi/3zM0lvh Check us out at: hume.ai LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/hume-ai YouTube: bit.ly/3zS3Ekq If you have any questions you'd like answered in an upcoming episode, feel free to send them to thefeelingslab@hume.ai. About Hume AI: Hume AI is a research lab and technology company. Our mission is to ensure that artificial intelligence is built to serve human goals and emotional well-being.

Join us for our podcast on expressive vocalizations and machine learning, where we discuss the powerful, contagious non-word utterances like yelps, laughs, and sighs that play a critical role in our social and emotional lives and provide new channels for human-computer interaction. Our guests include Hume AI CEO Dr. Alan Cowen, Creative Destruction Lab and DeepMind research scientist Dr. Kory Mathewson, Dr. Gauthier Gidel, professor at the Université de Montréal and Mila faculty member, and Hume AI Research Scientists Dr. Panagiotis Tzirakis and Alice Baird. Hume AI is proud to co-organize ICML's Expressive Vocalization (ExVo) Workshop and Competition. Bringing together leading emotion scientists and AI researchers, ExVo explores the machine learning problem of understanding and generating vocal bursts—a wide range of expressive nonverbal vocalizations such as laughs, sighs, grunts, cries, screams, oohs, ahhs, and huhs (to name but a few). The challenge is co-sponsored by Hume AI, Mila, and the National Film Board of Canada. Competition info: https://www.competitions.hume.ai/exvo2022 The Feelings Lab, presented by Hume AI, explores the frontier of emotion science and its lessons for creating a more empathic future. We'll discover how scientists and technologists are integrating empathy into social media tools, robots, digital art, and more, with the goal of building equity and compassion into these ubiquitous AI systems. Each week, join our panel of expert hosts, and emotionally attuned guests, to learn how empathic technologies are shaping the modern world. Subscribe, and tell a friend to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts! Apple: apple.co/3iaXAO7 Spotify: spoti.fi/3zM0lvh Check us out at: hume.ai LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/hume-ai YouTube: bit.ly/3zS3Ekq If you have any questions you'd like answered in an upcoming episode, feel free to send them to thefeelingslab@hume.ai. About Hume AI: Hume AI is a research lab and technology company. Our mission is to ensure that artificial intelligence is built to serve human goals and emotional well-being.

Today's guest is Dr. Alan Cowen, CEO of hume.ai, to discuss fascinating new research on human emotional states, and how machine learning and AI techniques can be used to distinguish between them.

Dr. Alan Cowen is the Executive Director of The Hume Initiative (https://thehumeinitiative.org/), a non-profit dedicated to the responsible advancement of AI with empathy, and CEO of Hume AI (https://hume.ai/), an AI research lab and empathetic AI company that is hoping to pave the way for AI that improves our emotional well-being. Chad talks with Alan about forming clear ethical guidelines around how this technology should be used because there is a problem in that the public is skeptical about whether technology is used for good or bad. The Hume Initiative is intended to lay out what concrete use cases will be and what use cases shouldn't be supported. Hume AI is built for developers to construct empathic abilities into their applications. The Hume Initiative (https://thehumeinitiative.org/) Hume AI (https://hume.ai/) Follow Hume AI on Twitter (https://twitter.com/hume__ai) or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/hume-ai/). Follow Alan on Twitter (https://twitter.com/AlanCowen) or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/alan-cowen/). Follow thoughtbot on Twitter (https://twitter.com/thoughtbot) or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/150727/). Become a Sponsor (https://thoughtbot.com/sponsorship) of Giant Robots! Transcript: CHAD: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Chad Pytel. And with me today is Dr. Alan Cowen, the Executive Director of The Hume Initiative, a non-profit dedicated to the responsible advancement of AI with empathy, and CEO of Hume AI, an AI research lab and empathetic AI company. Alan, thank you for joining me. DR. COWEN: Thanks for having me on. CHAD: That's a lot of words in that introduction. I'm glad I got through it in one take. Let's take a step back a little bit and talk about the two different things, The Hume Initiative and Hume AI. And what came first? DR. COWEN: So they were conceptualized at the same time. Practically speaking, Hume AI was started first only because it currently is the sole supporter of The Hume Initiative. But they were both conceptualized as this way to adjust two of the main problems that people have faced bringing empathic abilities to technology. Technology needs to have empathic abilities. If AI is going to get smart enough to make decisions on our behalf, it should understand whether those decisions are good or bad for our well-being. And a big part of that is understanding people's emotions because emotions are really what determine our well-being. The Hume Initiative addresses one of the challenges, which is the formation of clear ethical guidelines around how this technology should be used. And it's not because the companies pursuing this have bad intents; that's not the point at all. The problem is that the public is probably justifiably skeptical of whether this technology will be used for them or against them. And The Hume Initiative is intended as a way of laying out what the concrete use cases will be and what use cases shouldn't be supported. Hume AI is introducing solutions to the problem of how we build empathic AI algorithms. And the challenge there has been the data. So there have been a lot of attempts at building empathic AI or emotion AI, whatever you call it, basically ways of reading facial expression, emotion in the voice, and language. And there's been a few challenges, but most of them come down to the fact that the data tends to be based on outdated theories of emotion and/or it tends to be based on people's perceptual ratings of images largely from the internet or videos that are collected in more of an observational way without experimental control. And within those perceptual judgments, you see gender biases, sometimes racial biases, biases by what people are wearing, whether they're wearing sunglasses, for example, because people with sunglasses for some reason are perceived as being proud. [laughter] And the algorithms will always label people with sunglasses as being proud if you're training the algorithm that way. What you need basically is some way to control for people's identity, what they're wearing, get people's own self-reports as to what they're feeling or what they're expressing, and do it in a way that's somewhat randomized so that different people express a wide range of emotional behaviors in a wide range of contexts. And the contexts are somewhat randomized. So that's what we're doing with Hume AI is we're gathering that data, and it requires large-scale experiments to be run around the world. CHAD: In terms of the actual product that Hume AI is going to do, is it a standalone product? Or is it something that people building products will use? DR. COWEN: It's a developer product. It's built for developers to build empathic abilities into their applications. And so we are about to launch a developer portal, and we have a waitlist on our website on hume.ai for that. In the meantime, we've been licensing out the models that we're training and the data that we're using to train those models, which I actually kind of view as somewhat interchangeable. Models are basically descriptions of data. Some people have the resources to train those models on-premise; some people don't. But we're providing the solution to any developer who wants to build the ability to understand, for example, vocal expression into, say, a digital assistant. So can the digital assistant understand when you're frustrated and be able to change its response based on that information? And even potentially update the actual network, the neural network that's being used to generate that response, actually, backpropagate the fact that this was an unsatisfactory response and make the algorithm better. Is this something that you could use for health tech? So people are building out telehealth solutions that incorporate AI in various ways, one of which is can we get an objective classification of emotional behavior that can be used to help triage patients, send them to the right place, put them in touch with the right help? Can it be used to sub-diagnose disorders, diagnose disorders with more statistical power? Because you can incorporate more data and develop better treatments for those disorders, and that can be done in a wide range of contexts. CHAD: So you mentioned training AI models. I don't want to make the assumption that everyone knows what that means or looks like. Maybe if we could take a step back, if you don't mind, talk about what that maybe traditionally looks like and how Hume is actually different. DR. COWEN: Yeah, totally. When it comes to empathic AI, so this is an area where you're trying to train an algorithm to measure facial movements insofar as they have distinct meanings or measure inflections of the voice while people are speaking to understand the non-verbal indications of emotion in the voice. When you are training an algorithm to do that, you're taking in images, video, audio, and you're predicting people as attributions of emotion to themselves or to others and what people are feeling or what people say they're expressing or what other people say they hear in an expression. You need a lot of data for that. Traditionally, people have used smaller datasets and assumed that emotion can be reduced to a few categories. That's been one solution to this problem. And so basically, you'll have people pose facial expressions of anger, fear, happiness, sadness, disgust, and surprise, which are called the basic six emotions. And that was introduced by Paul Ekman in the 1970s. And there are whole datasets of people posing those six expressions or perhaps combinations of them. And usually, those facial expressions are front-lit and front-facing and meet certain constraints. And when you train a model on that data, it doesn't tend to generalize very well to naturalistic expressions that you encounter from day-to-day for a lot of different reasons; one is that the six basic emotions only capture about 30% of what people perceive in an expression. Another is that people in everyday situations have a wide range of lighting conditions, viewpoints, et cetera. And there's more diversity in age, gender than you see in these datasets and in ethnicity and so forth. And so, these algorithms don't generalize. Another approach is to get ratings of data from the internet. So there, you're not creating the dataset for this specific purpose. You're just scraping as many facial expressions or recordings of voices as you possibly can, maybe from YouTube. That's one way to scale up. That's one way to capture a much greater variety of naturalistic expressions. But then you're gathering ratings of these images. And those ratings are influenced not just by what somebody is expressing but also by somebody's gender, ethnicity, age, and what they're wearing, and so forth. CHAD: Well, in those scenarios, a person has also classified the image, to begin with, right? DR. COWEN: Yeah. CHAD: So someone is labeling that image as angry, for example. DR. COWEN: So typically, you're scraping a bunch of videos. You're giving them to raters typically from one country. And those raters are categorizing those images based on what they perceive to be the expression, and there are a lot of influences on that. If somebody is wearing a sporting outfit, and this is a hard bit of context to cut out, you can generally infer this person is likely to be expressing triumph or disappointments or all the different things people express when they're playing sports. And it's very different if somebody's wearing a suit. And so, these different biases seep into the algorithm. We did train probably the best version of this kind of algorithm when I was at Google. And we used it to study people's expressions in other videos from around the world, mostly home videos. And we found that people form expressions in characteristic contexts around the world. And the relationship between context and expression was largely preserved. We were looking at 16 facial expressions we were able to label accurately. And this was probably with the best version of an algorithm trained in this way. But we still only captured about half of the information people take away from expressions because we had to throw away a lot of the predictions due to these biases. So that's how algorithms are traditionally trained. Another way that you could go about it is by training a large model, like a large language model, if you're looking at an emotional language and query it in a special way. So let's say you take a GPT-3 kind of model, and you say, "Hey, what are the emotions associated with this sentence?" And there, you see exactly the same kind of biases as you'd see in perceptual ratings because typically, it's saying what is likely to be in that data. So it might say, "Well, pigeons are disgusting, and doves are beautiful," or something like that. And that's the kind of bias we don't care about. But you can imagine there are a lot of biases that we do care about in that data too. [laughs] And so, what's needed is experimental control. And I think this is actually when it comes to the things we really care about, something that people should consider more often in machine learning. What are the confounds that exist in the data that you're training an algorithm on? And if you really care about those confounds and you want to be scientific about it, about removing them, what's the solution? Well, the solution is to somehow randomize what somebody is expressing, for example. And that's what we do at Hume. We actually gather data with people reacting, for example, to very strongly evocative stimuli, which could be images, videos, paintings, et cetera, music. And we have balanced the set of stimuli in a way that makes it richly evocative of as many emotions as possible. And then what somebody is likely to be experiencing in a given setting is randomized relative to who they are since they see a random set of these stimuli or they undergo a random set of tasks. And so, to the extent possible, we've removed some of the relationships between ethnicity, gender, age, and what somebody is experiencing, or what they're expressing. And so we do this in a lot of different ways. And one thing you do is you can train on basically what is the stimulus that somebody was looking at instead of training on somebody's perception of an expression. CHAD: Hopefully, talking through this a little bit has helped people, one, I guess, understand why this is difficult. And that's where the need for a product by a company that specializes in it is important because it would be pretty difficult for a company just getting started to be able to do this in a scientifically controlled way. And in a sense, it's sort of like pooling the resources behind one product to do it well, and that can really do it well. You recently raised money pre-seed from investors. How obvious was the need to them, and how easy or hard was it for you to raise money? DR. COWEN: I had been basically in this world for a long time before I started Hume AI and The Hume Initiative. So during grad school, while I was publishing a lot of this science that was showing people's expressions were much more nuanced than a lot of these datasets and algorithms had considered before, I was getting inbounds from tech companies. And so, I worked a little bit with some startups. I worked with Facebook. I worked with Google. And I had seen this problem from a lot of different perspectives and viewpoints already. The need for data was very clear. The need for algorithms was clear because people literally had reached out to me and asked, "What are the best algorithms?" And I had to say, "Look, there are a few things, but all of them have problems. And they're mostly focused on the face, and you won't see much for the voice. And you won't see much for language." And what I had trained at Google was not something that was publicly available for facial expression. What is available for language probably the best one is another dataset that I helped put together at Google and algorithms trained on that called the GoEmotions dataset, which is used by Hugging Faces emotional language algorithm. And so I knew that there was this need, and a lot of people were looking for this kind of data, and so that's where it started. So talking to investors, it wasn't too hard to show them all the evidence that there was a need for this, a big market. And we raised a $5 million pre-seed. What we have spent a lot of that so far is in data collection. And that's made a huge difference in training algorithms for facial expression, voice, language, and so forth. And then what turns out to be more of a challenge is delivering those algorithms to people. And we're actually building a platform, an API platform, for that that will be really helpful in getting people started. CHAD: As you took on investors who, you know, they're trying to build a business. They want to create a business that gives them a return. And as you move towards a product in the marketplace, what are the things that you've encountered that are the biggest concerns in terms of the success? DR. COWEN: There's a scientific and sort of almost educational challenge. I think people have been fixated on a few ideas about emotion for a long time; these really sticky ideas like you can reduce emotion to six categories or two dimensions. So even when people take these really nuanced and accurate models that we've trained to distinguish 28 different kinds of facial expression, much broader array of facial expressions or 24 different kinds of vocal expression in vocal utterances like laughs, and cries, and screams, and sighs, and 16 different kinds of speech prosody, typically, people will take these, and they'll take out a few emotions, and they say, "Okay, well, this prediction is for the anger prediction, and that's the one I'm interested in." The challenge is in conceptualizing the phenomenon people are interested in classifying with these models and how they can relate that to what the model is predicting because typically, what constitutes anger is very different from one situation to another. Someone who's angry, who is maybe playing a sport, is going to be much more vocal about it than if you're on a customer service call. And that context is really important in going from an embedding that's general for different expressions, that can recognize 16 different emotional intonations in speech and fine-tuning it for that specific context. And I think that process can be difficult to understand if you're not fluent in the language of emotion science and particularly where it's gone over the last few years. And so part of what we're doing now is actually setting up ways to visualize the outputs of our models really smoothly and with any data so that people can navigate their data and actually see, okay, well, what this model is saying is an embedding of anger for what I'm interested in. Maybe it's customer service calls. Actually, it's a combination of a little bit of contempt and a little bit of disappointment in what people have labeled these expressions with. And now I can take this embedding, and I understand how to use it better. CHAD: Do you anticipate or hope for, and maybe those are the same, and maybe they're different, that you're going to have a few big customers or lots of small customers or something in between? DR. COWEN: We hope lots of small customers. [laughs] I want to get this into as many people's hands as possible. A lot of people are doing really innovative things in the startup world. There's also a huge need in big applications like digital assistants that are mostly in the hands of a few companies basically. We want to have an impact there as well. The difference, of course, will be the manner in which these solutions are delivered. The ease of providing people with APIs, subscribing to a pay-as-you-go model I think is really attractive for startups. And so that's how we're accessing that market. On the other hand, we do already have some big customers who are licensing the data or the models themselves. And I anticipate there will be a lot of that going forward as well. Mid-Roll Ad I wanted to tell you all about something I've been working on quietly for the past year or so, and that's AgencyU. AgencyU is a membership-based program where I work one-on-one with a small group of agency founders and leaders toward their business goals. We do one-on-one coaching sessions and also monthly group meetings. We start with goal setting, advice, and problem-solving based on my experiences over the last 18 years of running thoughtbot. As we progress as a group, we all get to know each other more. And many of the AgencyU members are now working on client projects together and even referring work to each other. Whether you're struggling to grow an agency, taking it to the next level and having growing pains, or a solo founder who just needs someone to talk to, in my 18 years of leading and growing thoughtbot, I've seen and learned from a lot of different situations, and I'd be happy to work with you. Learn more and sign up today at thoughtbot.com/agencyu. That's A-G-E-N-C-Y, the letter U. CHAD: You said you've built up to this point. But how long have you been working at it so far in terms of creating the actual product that will go to market soon? DR. COWEN: The company is only a year old. And we actually just had our first year anniversary. CHAD: Congratulations. DR. COWEN: [laughs] Thank you. Thank you. We are just now about to launch our platform, which I think is going to be our main product going forward. We're also running machine learning competitions in the research community, which there will be involvement from lots of tech companies and researchers around the world. So in many ways, we're still just getting started. But we have already what I think are the best models for understanding facial expression, the best models for understanding vocal utterances or what we call vocal bursts, which is actually different than understanding speech prosody or emotional intonation and language more generally. And we need separate models for that. We have both of probably the best models for those two modalities and are building what we think will be the best model for emotional language as well. And so we have solutions. Part of the product is delivering them, and that's what we're launching now. So we're at the beginning of that. CHAD: So has to get to this point taken longer than you were anticipating, the time you were anticipating or shorter? Did it go faster? DR. COWEN: I think my estimates for actually training these models and beating the state of the art were about on point. [chuckles] I mean, when we got started, I was ready to start running these experiments pretty quickly. So I designed all the experiments myself and started running them around the world, recruiting participants through labs, through consulting agencies, through crowdsourcing websites, a lot of different ways. There were a few challenges along the way, like figuring out how you could adjust the consent form in ways that weren't really relevant to ethics. And we had IRB approval. We had a very robust consent process for people to understand how their data was going to be used but were relevant to figuring out how you come up with language that is consistent with data privacy laws and each individual jurisdiction where you're running data collection. That took a little longer than I thought. [laughs] But suffice to say, we had the data. We had the models pretty quickly. I was able to recruit some of the top AI researchers in this space pretty quickly. We hit the ground running. We were able to take the data and train state-of-the-art models pretty fast. What's taking longer is getting the models into people's hands in two ways. I mean, negotiating enterprise contracts is always a struggle that many people are aware of. And then figuring out we needed to have a really user-friendly platform basically to deliver the models through APIs, and that's taking a little bit longer than anticipated. CHAD: So The Hume Initiative is a group of people that have come together and established some guidelines that companies sign on to in terms of what their solutions are going to take into account and do and not do. Do I have that right? DR. COWEN: Yeah. So we put together a separate non-profit. And we brought together some of the leading AI researchers, ethicists, with emotion scientists, and cyber law experts to this very unique composition of domain knowledge to develop what are really the first concrete ethical guidelines for empathic AI. Let's say for this use case; we support it if you meet these requirements. These are our recommendations. And for this use case, we don't support it. And we actually get really concrete. I think generally, with AI principles efforts or AI ethics efforts, people focus on the broad principles and left it to, I don't know, it's unclear often who is going to decide whether a use case is admissible or not under these principles. Because let's say they're codified into law, then it'll end up being a judge who doesn't necessarily have any knowledge of AI or emotion science or any of these things to say this is a use case that's consistent with these principles or not. We wanted to avoid that. And I think particularly; I think that the public is skeptical too of broader principles where they don't really know whether a given use of their data is compliant with those principles or not. I mean, sometimes it's easier. There are really good policies regarding surveillance that I think most of the big tech companies ascribe to where they say they won't be using your data in ways that you expect to have privacy and you actually don't. So I think there are pretty good principles there. There haven't really been good principles or concrete guidelines for what people might consider manipulative. And I think some technology that incorporates cues of emotion can be deemed manipulative in a sense. In the sense that you might not want to be sucked into a comment thread because something really provocative was shown to you after clicking on a notification that was unrelated to that. But the algorithm may have figured out this is a way to keep you in the app. [laughs] So that can be considered manipulative in some kind of way. I mean, it's bad if the person is vulnerable at that time. If the algorithm is able to read cues of your emotions and maybe through interoperability across different applications or because it knows it or has this information, this data already, it can say this is a person who is vulnerable right now to being provoked because they're in a bad mood. Maybe I can see that they just ordered food, and it's late, and it was canceled, whatever is. It can be any number of things. Or the way that this person queried a digital assistant or a search engine revealed this kind of emotional state. We don't want the algorithm to use that to get us to do something we otherwise wouldn't want to do So the principles we've set up around that are really important. Whenever somebody's emotional behaviors are involved or cues to their emotional state, they should be used to make sure that the algorithm is not using these cues against somebody or using them as a means to an end. What they should be used to do is make sure the algorithm is improving our emotions or improving our emotional state over time on average across many different people so that we're less frustrated on average over time, and we have more instances where we're satisfied, or content, or happy, or all inspired or whatever your measures or indicators of well-being you have present through these behaviors might be. The algorithm should be using these behaviors to enhance your well-being fundamentally. And wherever they're entering into an algorithm, we should be privy to how the algorithm is using them. And so that's essentially what the principles codify and make very concrete, and they say, "In this use case, this is how you can make sure this is the case, you know, health and wellness, digital assistants, photo-taking, arts and culture applications, film, animation." There are all these different applications of empathic AI. So it's a very broadly applicable thing because it applies to any text, any video with people in it, any audio where you hear people's voices. This is just a part of the data that's untapped relatively, or to the extent that it's tapped by algorithms today; it's done in a way that we don't really see, or maybe the developers don't even realize. If we make explicit that these are cues to people's emotions, there's a huge number of applications where we can then have algorithms learn from people's emotional cues and decide whether to enhance certain emotions or use them in certain ways. So I think it's going to be really, really key to get this right. And it requires expertise in how these emotions operate in daily life, in emotion science, in what is the definition of privacy here? What's the definition of a biometric measure which involves cyber law? And how does this intersect with existing laws and so forth? It's something that requires AI research expertise. You have to know how these algorithms work. It's something that requires specific kinds of AI ethics expertise. What is the alignment problem? How do we consider the value alignment in this situation? Which I think really comes down to optimizing for people's well-being. And we have brought together exactly that composition of expertise in The Hume Initiative. CHAD: Hume AI has sort of signed off and said, "We're going to follow these guidelines of The Hume Initiative." Does that apply to every customer who is a customer of Hume AI? DR. COWEN: Exactly, yeah. So we actually require people on our terms of use to adhere to the guidelines. And so, for a lot of people, that won't be that difficult because they'll look through the guidelines. They'll see that their use case is supported, that they're already following the recommendations that are in the guidelines. And so they're good. They're good to go. Some people might [laughs] see that they're not compliant with the recommendations. And then they'll be able to make adjustments to their product so that they're compliant. And then others who are pursuing use cases that are not supported by the ethics guidelines can't use the platform, which is exactly what we want. We don't want people using this for mass surveillance, for example, and that's stated pretty clearly in the guidelines. So yeah, we do require all of our customers to adhere to these guidelines that we've now launched at thehumeinitiative.org. CHAD: How important to you was it to have The Hume Initiative and these guidelines? Was it a precondition of doing all of this? DR. COWEN: Yeah, it was important for two reasons; one is that I felt that this shouldn't be used to exacerbate a lot of the problems that we're going to run into with AI eventually, if not already, where AI could be using our emotional behaviors to optimize for an objective that could be misaligned potentially with our desires, what emotions we want to feel, or with our well-being. Even though when you're privy to these emotional behaviors, you have the opportunity to do what a human does and say, "I have empathy. Therefore, I can say this is probably not a good way to get people to spend more time on this app or to buy this thing because I know that it's exploitative in some way." And I don't think that's the norm. I think, by and large, these strategies that have been used to optimize AI algorithms today have been good proxies for our well-being. Like, engagement is not necessarily a bad proxy for whether we want to spend time on doing something, but it's not good in all cases. And I think there's a huge amount of room for improvement because we don't know in all cases how the AI is getting us to be more engaged. And many of the strategies it uses may not be consistent with our well-being. But particularly going forward, once AI is smart enough, and once it has more control points in the environment, whether there are robots or digital assistants that have control over Internet of Things devices, AI will have an increasing influence on the environment around us, and it'll be smarter and smarter. And before long, it will be very important to make sure that it's aligned with our values. This is the concept of the alignment problem. Eventually, if you have a really, really smart, all-powerful, not all-powerful, but similar [laughter] powerful robot in your house and it's written by AI, and you tell it, "Hey, robot. I'm hungry. Make me the most delicious meal that you can that's healthy for me and satisfies all of these parameters using ingredients that are available in my kitchen." And if your cat happens to be in your kitchen and it realizes that, hey, this is lean meat. I have a great sense of what this person likes, so this is going to be really tasty. And it cooks your cat. [laughs] That's a way of satisfying this objective that you don't like. And so if it understood something about what is it that makes people happy by learning from our emotional behaviors in everyday life, we're not often saying to this robot, "This is something that I don't want you to cook." But if the robot understood this is something that makes you happy in everyday life, that would be one proxy for it to be able to figure out this would be a negative on your well-being if it did this. And so that is ultimately the solution. So we're going from; first, we at least want to optimize our algorithms existing today for people to feel better or indications of their well-being. And then, later on, we just want to make sure that, increasingly, that is the objective of these algorithms. I think that's been really important to me. CHAD: Obviously, it's not like the other companies out there doing this want to create a robot that cooks your cat. DR. COWEN: No. [laughs] CHAD: But it is possible that other companies don't prioritize it in the same way that Hume might. How do you stay motivated in the face of maybe not everyone caring about creating this in the same way that you are? DR. COWEN: That brings me to the other main reason for doing things this way, which is that I think there's enough of an economic incentive that you can create a company that is more successful for having made ethical commitments than otherwise. And I think that's particularly true if your company wasn't going to do anything unethical anyway, [laughs] which we didn't plan on doing and most companies don't plan on doing. Because if your company is not going to do anything unethical anyway, then you might as well be able to explain to people how you made the decision about what's ethical and what isn't and be able to make guarantees to them that actually attract more customers. Because the customers are able to say, "Look, they've made a legal commitment to not doing this." I don't have to suspect that these things are being used against me or in a manipulative way or in a way that doesn't preserve the privacy that I thought I had. I don't have to be skeptical of any of these things because I can see clearly that the company has made this potentially legal commitment, at least that's something that they're committed to publicly." So in that sense, it's purely an advantage. And that's true for AI generally but specifically for empathic AI. I think there's been a hunger for those kinds of ethical guidelines, and you can see it in how people react to news of this technology. There is generally a skepticism in the air. I think it goes back also to maybe sometimes people's concerns about privacy are legitimate if the question is whether what the output is picking up on is going to wind up in the hands of people you don't want it to end up in. And those people are privy to things about your lifestyle, or they're able to use that against you in some way. That is a real privacy issue. It's not necessarily, to me, a privacy issue. If an algorithm is processing these things on device and the data never goes anywhere, and it's only used in a way in which you actually want it to be used, which is maybe to surface better music to you or to have you be taking better pictures on your phone, these are all great things for you. And that data doesn't necessarily go anywhere in the same way that any of the photo data you take doesn't necessarily go anywhere even though it's already processed by lots and lots of algorithms, or your search queries aren't necessarily not private. Just because they're processed by algorithms, maybe even algorithms that are good for the business, they're not necessarily being seen by humans. And so, it's not necessarily a privacy issue. But people have this skepticism about emotion AI, in particular, empathic AI, in particular, because I think there are certain instincts that it plays on, like the idea that you're being watched. Early in our species history and even before our species, it was very important to be very wary of predators watching you from the bushes or from the crevices and all that. And I think that instinct is involved whenever we're being recorded, whenever there's a camera. And that's not just an issue for empathic AI but also for things like facial identification, which brings up legitimate privacy concerns but also, sometimes there are uses that we don't care about at all, or they're clearly good. Like, I think facial identification for unlocking your phone that's a really good use. And that is basically what it's used for by some companies. Some big tech companies are just using it for that and not much else. And so, when you unpack what you're doing with this stuff, it makes it a lot easier for people to be comfortable with it. And that is what the ethics initiative is doing essentially. It's giving people all of these use cases and recipes and unpacking what this is being used for so that people can be more comfortable with it. And I think that's actually something that is in the business' interest. CHAD: That's great. Well, I really appreciate, you know, there are a lot of pushes and pulls when founders are creating new companies. So to put a stake in the ground in terms of what's important to you and the right way to build this product and to go through the effort of creating these guidelines and a whole initiative around it and everything is...well, I can see that not everyone does that because of the concern around oh, is this going to hurt my business? Is it going to make it harder for me to succeed? And so when principals and business case align, great, but even when they don't, I think it's important, and I commend you for making sure that you're leading with your principals. DR. COWEN: Thanks. I mean, there have certainly been challenges to it. But I think that even so, the pros have outweighed the cons both ethically and for our business for us so far. CHAD: Great. So if folks have enjoyed today's conversation and either want to dig in more, you have a podcast, right? DR. COWEN: That's right. We have a podcast called The Feelings Lab, where we explore different emotions that are of concern in everyday life, that guide our everyday lives, and that are changing as a consequence of changes in society and technology. In Season One, we focused mostly on one emotion per episode. We had guests like Fred Armisen talking about horror, which is a really funny perspective to have [laughs] because fear is not always bad, and sometimes we like to watch horror movies. [laughs] And in Season Two, we're focusing particularly on the technology. And so we had the CEO of Embodied Paolo Pirjanian, who has a robot called Moxie that's used to help kids in their emotional development, and it's a great toy. We had the CEO, one of the co-founders of Soul Machines, which was an avatar company. We had VP at Omniverse Platform Developments in NVIDIA talking about how AI is changing the abilities of artists and changing basically the way that film is made. And it's very interesting. So I'd encourage people to check that out. CHAD: Where can people find that? I assume by searching for Feelings Lab in the podcast player. But do you have a domain name too? DR. COWEN: Yeah, you can go to hume.ai, and then you can go to our content hub. That's one way to find it. And you can find the podcast on Apple, SoundCloud, pretty much wherever you get podcasts. And we also have a YouTube channel, The Feelings Lab. Actually, I think the YouTube channel is Hume AI, and then we post content on The Feelings Lab there as well. CHAD: And you mentioned people can sign up now to be on the list for the Hume AI. DR. COWEN: So yes, if you are interested in building an empathic AI technology of any kind and you would like access to our voice models or face models, emotional language models, easy access, one-line API call for streaming or for files, pretty much any use case you might have, you can sign up for the waitlist at hume.ai. And we will be releasing a beta version of the platform over the next few months. CHAD: Cool. Well, if folks want to get in touch with you or follow along with you, where are the places where they can do that? DR. COWEN: Folks who want to get in touch, you can email hello@hume.ai for information about our solutions, offerings, the company, or you can reach out to me personally alan@hume.ai CHAD: Awesome. Alan, thank you so much for joining me. I really appreciate it. DR. COWEN: Thanks for having me. CHAD: You can subscribe to the show and find notes and transcripts for this episode at giantrobots.fm. If you have questions or comments, email us at hosts@giantrobots.fm. You can find me on Twitter at @cpytel. This podcast is brought to you by thoughtbot and produced and edited by Mandy Moore. Thanks for listening, and see you next time. ANNOUNCER: This podcast was brought to you by thoughtbot. thoughtbot is your expert design and development partner. Let's make your product and team a success. Special Guest: Alan Cowen.

Dr Alan Cowen is an applied mathematician and computational emotion scientist. Bet you didn't even know “computational emotion scientist” was a thing! Dr Cowen's work at Hume AI and The Hume Initiative centers around building artificial intelligence to serve human goals and emotional well-being, and charting an ethical path for empathic AI. What does that mean? For starters, it could mean digital assistants like Alexa and Siri the ability to recognize our emotions, and respond appropriately. But down the line, when those assistants are less like disembodied voices and more like high-res 3D characters in the metaverse? I, for one, sure hope they can tell how I'm feeling and react with empathy. Dig into the science of how and why that just might be where we're headed, in this episode of Meta-Averse.Learn More about Hume:Hume AI WebsiteHume AI Discovery LabThe Hume Initiative WebsiteThe Feelings Lab PodcastAre you a developer, or just have questions? Email Dr Alan Cowen This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit metaaverse.substack.com

Join Dr. Alan Cowen, CEO of Hume, and Kathy Tafel, Senior Director of Engineering at Artsy, as they discuss "Aesthetic Appreciation & Fine Art." What is aesthetic appreciation, and how does visual art evoke emotion? How close is AI to understanding our aesthetic feelings? Will AI bring art curation to the masses? Will AI ever be able to generate paintings on par with those of Rembrandt, Monet, and Frida Kahlo? Why is it that uniqueness and ownership imbue art with a special aura, and can NFTs really bring that aura to digital art? We debate how technology can bring more aesthetic appreciation into our digitally connected world. The Feelings Lab, presented by Hume AI, explores the frontier of emotion science and its lessons for creating a more empathic future. We'll discover how scientists and technologists are integrating empathy into social media tools, robots, digital art, and more, with the goal of building equity and compassion into these ubiquitous AI systems. Each week, join our panel of expert hosts, and emotionally attuned guests, to learn how empathic technologies are shaping the modern world. Subscribe, and tell a friend to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts! Apple: apple.co/3iaXAO7 Spotify: spoti.fi/3zM0lvh Check us out at: hume.ai LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/hume-ai YouTube: bit.ly/3zS3Ekq If you have any questions you'd like answered in an upcoming episode, feel free to send them to thefeelingslab@hume.ai. About Hume AI: Hume AI is a research lab and technology company. Our mission is to ensure that artificial intelligence is built to serve human goals and emotional well-being.

Join Dr. Alan Cowen, CEO of Hume AI, and Arjun Nagedran, Co-Founder & CTO of Mursion, with Matt Forte in our episode on empathy and augmented reality (AR). We discuss how technology is poised to bring more empathy into the world, bridging physical, cultural, and demographic divides. Can augmented reality reveal and help us combat our prejudices? Can it serve as a liaison between people who communicate differently? Learn how companies like Mursion are already using AI-enhanced AR to coach people on how to be more empathic and communicate better in the workplace. The Feelings Lab, presented by Hume AI, explores the frontier of emotion science and its lessons for creating a more empathic future. We'll discover how scientists and technologists are integrating empathy into social media tools, robots, digital art, and more, with the goal of building equity and compassion into these ubiquitous AI systems. Each week, join our panel of expert hosts, and emotionally attuned guests, to learn how empathic technologies are shaping the modern world. Subscribe, and tell a friend to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts! Apple: apple.co/3iaXAO7 Spotify: spoti.fi/3zM0lvh Check us out at: hume.ai LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/hume-ai YouTube: bit.ly/3zS3Ekq If you have any questions you'd like answered in an upcoming episode, feel free to send them to thefeelingslab@hume.ai. About Hume AI: Hume AI is a research lab and technology company. Our mission is to ensure that artificial intelligence is built to serve human goals and emotional well-being.

In this episode, we are joined by Dr. Dennis Wall, Professor at Stanford and founder of Cognoa, maker of the first FDA-approved AI-powered diagnosis method for autism, to discuss how empathic AI technologies are poised to transform healthcare. Join Dr. Wall, Dr. Alan Cowen, CEO of Hume, Dr. Dacher Keltner, Professor of Psychology at UC Berkeley, and Matt Forte as they discuss a future in which conditions like autism can be diagnosed efficiently at home, at a younger (more treatable) age, with the help of empathic AI and crowdsourced empathy. What will healthcare look like when AI-empowered doctors can treat exponentially more patients at a fraction of the current cost? How will AI bring more personalized, accurate diagnosis and treatment to broader, more diverse communities? We provide answers to these questions and more in our episode on Empathy and Digital Health. The Feelings Lab, presented by Hume AI, explores the frontier of emotion science and its lessons for creating a more empathic future. We'll discover how scientists and technologists are integrating empathy into social media tools, robots, digital art, and more, with the goal of building equity and compassion into these ubiquitous AI systems. Each week, join our panel of expert hosts, and emotionally attuned guests, to learn how empathic technologies are shaping the modern world. Subscribe, and tell a friend to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts! Apple: apple.co/3iaXAO7 Spotify: spoti.fi/3zM0lvh Check us out at: hume.ai LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/hume-ai YouTube: bit.ly/3zS3Ekq If you have any questions you'd like answered in an upcoming episode, feel free to send them to thefeelingslab@hume.ai. About Hume AI: Hume AI is a research lab and technology company. Our mission is to ensure that artificial intelligence is built to serve human goals and emotional well-being.

In a world where you can sketch a character and it will come to life, how will AI transform the arts? Join Dr. Alan Cowen, CEO of Hume, Richard Kerris, VP of Omniverse Platform Development at NVIDIA, and host Matt Forte as they discuss the present and future of “Awe in Digital Art.” How does art evoke emotion? Can AI help us unlock imaginative universes that allow us to experience the sublime in a newly immersive, personalized, and educational fashion? We discuss how AI tools that give individual artists the creative power of a movie studio will affect the future of art and entertainment, and whether we should grieve the extinction of physical puppets from films like Jurassic Park by Steven Spielberg. Link mentioned in this episode: NVIDIA Omniverse Marbles RTX Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0_NZDSqR3Y&t=2s The Feelings Lab, presented by Hume AI, explores the frontier of emotion science and its lessons for creating a more empathic future. We'll discover how scientists and technologists are integrating empathy into social media tools, robots, digital art, and more, with the goal of building equity and compassion into these ubiquitous AI systems. Each week, join our panel of expert hosts, and emotionally attuned guests, to learn how empathic technologies are shaping the modern world. Subscribe, and tell a friend to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts! Apple: https://apple.co/3iaXAO7 Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3zM0lvh Check us out at: https://hume.ai LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/hume-ai YouTube: https://bit.ly/3zS3Ekq If you have any questions you'd like answered in an upcoming episode, feel free to send them to thefeelingslab@hume.ai. About Hume AI: Hume AI is a research lab and technology company. Our mission is to ensure that artificial intelligence is built to serve human goals and emotional well-being.

In the Season 2 Premiere of The Feelings Lab, join Hume AI CEO, Dr. Alan Cowen and Embodied CEO, Dr. Paolo Pirjanian, with host Matt Forte as they discuss "Compassion and Robots." What will it take to assuage some people's fear of robots? Can robots empathize? Can they deliver therapies, aid in child development, and give us deeper insight into ourselves? We discuss what it will take to make robots compassionate, and how the future of AI may hinge on this central challenge. The Feelings Lab, presented by Hume AI, explores the frontier of emotion science and its lessons for creating a more empathic future. We'll discover how scientists and technologists are integrating empathy into social media tools, robots, digital art, and more, with the goal of building equity and compassion into these ubiquitous AI systems. Each week, join our panel of expert hosts, and emotionally attuned guests, to learn how empathic technologies are shaping the modern world. Subscribe, and tell a friend to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts! Apple: https://apple.co/3iaXAO7 Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3zM0lvh Check us out at: https://hume.ai LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/hume-ai YouTube: https://bit.ly/3zS3Ekq If you have any questions you'd like answered in an upcoming episode, feel free to send them to thefeelingslab@hume.ai. About Hume AI: Hume AI is a research lab and technology company. Our mission is to ensure that artificial intelligence is built to serve human goals and emotional well-being.

Join Hume AI CEO, Dr. Alan Cowen, and the President of Tawkify, Kellie Ammerman, with host Matt Forte as they discuss “Love and the Future of Dating.” Amid the pandemic, more people have turned to dating apps in search of meaningful relationships. In a world where AI curates our matches, is it possible for algorithms to optimize for deeper connections over shallow attractions? Perhaps a combination of AI and human matchmakers is necessary to help people find love more easily in this ever-changing landscape of dating. The Feelings Lab, presented by Hume AI, explores the frontier of emotion science and its lessons for creating a more empathic future. We'll discover how scientists and technologists are integrating empathy into social media tools, robots, digital art, and more, with the goal of building equity and compassion into these ubiquitous AI systems. Each week, join our panel of expert hosts, and emotionally attuned guests, to learn how empathic technologies are shaping the modern world. Subscribe, and tell a friend to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts! Apple: https://apple.co/3iaXAO7 Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3zM0lvh Check us out at: https://hume.ai LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/hume-ai YouTube: https://bit.ly/3zS3Ekq If you have any questions you'd like answered in an upcoming episode, feel free to send them to thefeelingslab@hume.ai. About Hume AI: Hume AI is a research lab and technology company. Our mission is to ensure that artificial intelligence is built to serve human goals and emotional well-being.

In a world of remote living, how can we ensure people are cared for? Join Hume CEO Dr. Alan Cowen, Harris Poll CEO John Gerzema, renowned psychologist Dr. Dacher Keltner, and host Matt Forte as they discuss how we can track well-being in a remote world. Defining "well-being" turns out to be more important than ever—not just for humans, but for the automated systems that increasingly orchestrate our digital lives. The Feelings Lab, presented by Hume AI, explores the frontier of emotion science and its lessons for creating a more empathic future. We'll discover how scientists and technologists are integrating empathy into social media tools, robots, digital art, and more, with the goal of building equity and compassion into these ubiquitous AI systems. Each week, join our panel of expert hosts, and emotionally attuned guests, to learn how empathic technologies are shaping the modern world. Subscribe, and tell a friend to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts! Apple: https://apple.co/3iaXAO7 Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3zM0lvh Check us out at: https://hume.ai LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/hume-ai YouTube: https://bit.ly/3zS3Ekq If you have any questions you'd like answered in an upcoming episode, feel free to send them to thefeelingslab@hume.ai. About Hume AI: Hume AI is a research lab and technology company. Our mission is to ensure that artificial intelligence is built to serve human goals and emotional well-being.

Will people find fulfillment in the metaverse? Join Hume AI CEO Dr. Alan Cowen, Soul Machines co-founder Greg Cross, and host Matt Forte as they discuss the promises and pitfalls of the metaverse. What exactly is it? Can it be a place where we can create and sustain emotional connections? And what do we stand to gain if we can get it right? The Feelings Lab, presented by Hume AI, explores the frontier of emotion science and its lessons for creating a more empathic future. We'll discover how scientists and technologists are integrating empathy into social media tools, robots, digital art, and more, with the goal of building equity and compassion into these ubiquitous AI systems. Each week, join our panel of expert hosts, and emotionally attuned guests, to learn how empathic technologies are shaping the modern world. Subscribe, and tell a friend to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts! Apple: https://apple.co/3iaXAO7 Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3zM0lvh Check us out at: https://hume.ai LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/hume-ai YouTube: https://bit.ly/3zS3Ekq If you have any questions you'd like answered in an upcoming episode, feel free to send them to thefeelingslab@hume.ai. About Hume AI: Hume AI is a research lab and technology company. Our mission is to ensure that artificial intelligence is built to serve human goals and emotional well-being.

A study last year found two thirds of artificial intelligence experts do not believe the technology would be used for social good as soon as 2030. A former Google scientist is tackling the problem – Dr Alan Cowen has founded Hume AI with the aim of making artificial intelligence more empathetic and human. Dr Alan Cowen joins me now from California. LISTEN ABOVE 

Emotion science has a lot to say about love. In this episode, we discuss chocolate, prairie voles, oxytocin, and the Greek phrase “fasolaki mou” (“my little green bean”). Join our recurring hosts Dr. Alan Cowen, Dr. Dacher Keltner, Danielle Krettek-Cobb, and Matt Forte as they welcome special guest, actor Melina Kanakaredes (“CSI: NY” and “The Resident.“) The Feelings Lab is a new podcast series from Hume AI. Grab a friend and set out on a journey with our expert hosts and celebrity guests as we explore the new frontier of emotion science and its lessons for creating a more empathic future. Subscribe, and tell a friend to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts! Apple: https://apple.co/3iaXAO7 Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3zM0lvh Check us out at https://hume.ai YouTube: https://bit.ly/3zS3Ekq If you have any questions you'd like answered in an upcoming episode, feel free to send them to thefeelingslab@hume.ai. About Hume AI: Hume AI is an AI research lab and technology company. Our mission is to ensure that future technology is built to serve our emotions, ensuring that as AI gets smarter it remains aligned with our goals.

In this week's episode of The Feelings Lab, we discuss the emotion of doubt with our hosts Dr. Alan Cowen, Dr. Dacher Keltner, Danielle Krettek-Cobb, and Matt Forte. Is doubt an emotion? Indeed, it is. And it can take on many different shapes: self-doubt, intellectual questioning, simple curiosity, imposter's syndrome, and more. At its most beneficial, doubt can help preserve and protect, it can inform and fuel personal growth, and it can even enlighten civilizations... but it can also cripple and destroy. Join us as we dig into this vital emotion. The Feelings Lab is a new podcast series from Hume AI. Grab a friend and set out on a journey with our expert hosts and celebrity guests as we explore the new frontier of emotion science and its lessons for creating a more empathic future. Subscribe, and tell a friend to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts! Apple: https://apple.co/3iaXAO7 Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3zM0lvh Check us out at https://hume.ai YouTube: https://bit.ly/3zS3Ekq If you have any questions you'd like answered in an upcoming episode, feel free to send them to thefeelingslab@hume.ai. About Hume AI: Hume AI is an AI research lab and technology company. Our mission is to ensure that future technology is built to serve our emotions, ensuring that as AI gets smarter it remains aligned with our goals.

In this week's episode of The Feelings Lab, we discuss the emotion of mirth. Join our recurring hosts Dr. Alan Cowen, Danielle Krettek-Cobb, and Matt Forte with humorist, best-selling author, and The Daily Show alum actor John Hodgman, the host of the Judge John Hodgman podcast. Shakespeare once said, “With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come." With our episode on mirth, we celebrate aging gracefully with laughter and amusement. Did mirth peak in the 1800s? What are the different flavors of mirth? Does Jon Stewart really compliment a joke as "very funny" with a totally straight and unamused face? Tune in to find out! The Feelings Lab is a new podcast series from Hume AI. Grab a friend and set out on a journey with our expert hosts and celebrity guests as we explore the new frontier of emotion science and its lessons for creating a more empathic future. Subscribe, and tell a friend to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts! Apple: https://apple.co/3iaXAO7 Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3zM0lvh Check us out at https://hume.ai LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/hume-ai YouTube: https://bit.ly/3zS3Ekq If you have any questions you'd like answered in an upcoming episode, feel free to send them to thefeelingslab@hume.ai. About Hume AI: Hume AI is an AI research lab and technology company. Our mission is to ensure that future technology is built to serve our emotions, ensuring that as AI gets smarter it remains aligned with our goals.

In this week's episode of The Feelings Lab, we discuss the emotion of anxiety. Join our recurring hosts Dr. Alan Cowen, Danielle Krettek-Cobb, and Matt Forte as they welcome special guest Professor George Bonanno who leads the Loss, Trauma, and Emotion Lab at Columbia University. Anxiety stems from a sense of foreboding. Whether felt chronically or in reaction to an immediate threat, anxiety is the bodily state of preparedness for something that could go wrong. Some anxiety is necessary, but these days there's just too much of it. We discuss what science tells us about how to combat anxiety by being flexible about how you cope with stress. The Feelings Lab is a new podcast series from Hume AI. Grab a friend and set out on a journey with our expert hosts and celebrity guests as we explore the new frontier of emotion science and its lessons for creating a more empathic future. Subscribe, and tell a friend to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts! Apple: https://apple.co/3iaXAO7 Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3zM0lvh Check us out at https://hume.ai LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/hume-ai YouTube: https://bit.ly/3zS3Ekq If you have any questions you'd like answered in an upcoming episode, feel free to send them to thefeelingslab@hume.ai. About Hume AI: Hume AI is an AI research lab and technology company. Our mission is to ensure that future technology is built to serve our emotions, ensuring that as AI gets smarter it remains aligned with our goals.

In this week's episode of The Feelings Lab, we discuss the emotion of horror with Fred Armisen, guest Emmy-award nominated actor, writer, producer and musician, who joins our recurring hosts Dr. Alan Cowen, Dr. Dacher Keltner, Danielle Krettek-Cobb and Matt Forte. “The call is coming from inside the house!” Wherein we discuss the unifying nature of the experience of horror in social groups, the aesthetic and cultural representation of the emotion throughout history, and how watching alien invasion films and “The Blair Witch Project” can make you more resilient. The Feelings Lab is a new podcast series from Hume AI. Grab a friend and set out on a journey with our expert hosts and celebrity guests as we explore the new frontier of emotion science and its lessons for creating a more empathic future. Subscribe, and tell a friend to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts! Apple: https://apple.co/3iaXAO7 Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3zM0lvh Check us out at https://hume.ai LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/hume-ai YouTube: https://bit.ly/3zS3Ekq If you have any questions you'd like answered in an upcoming episode, feel free to send them to thefeelingslab@hume.ai. About Hume AI: Hume AI is an AI research lab and technology company. Our mission is to ensure that future technology is built to serve our emotions, ensuring that as AI gets smarter it remains aligned with our goals.

In this week's episode of The Feelings Lab, we discuss the emotion of pride. Join returning hosts Dr. Alan Cowen, Dr. Dacher Keltner, Danielle Krettek-Cobb and Matt Forte with our guest Cassidy Lichtman, a professional volleyball player for Athletes Unlimited, a Chairperson of the Volleyball Player Executive Committee, and former member of the USA Volleyball Women's National Team. Learn the difference between authentic and hubristic pride, how prideful energy motivates, and how the pressure to sustain glory and triumph can destroy reputations. And yes, gorillas do beat their chest in celebratory pride. The Feelings Lab is a new podcast series from Hume AI. Grab a friend and set out on a journey with our expert hosts and celebrity guests as we explore the new frontier of emotion science and its lessons for creating a more empathic future. Subscribe, and tell a friend to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts! Apple: https://apple.co/3iaXAO7 Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3zM0lvh Check us out at https://hume.ai LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/hume-ai YouTube: https://bit.ly/3zS3Ekq If you have any questions you'd like answered in an upcoming episode, feel free to send them to thefeelingslab@hume.ai. About Hume AI: Hume AI is an AI research lab and technology company. Our mission is to ensure that future technology is built to serve our emotions, ensuring that as AI gets smarter it remains aligned with our goals.

In this week's episode of The Feelings Lab, we discuss the emotion of desire. Join our returning hosts Dr. Alan Cowen, Danielle Krettek-Cobb, Dr. Dacher Keltner and Matt Forte with special guest Monét XChange, the entertainment spitfire and first double crown winner from “RuPaul's Drag Race,” having earned the title Miss Congeniality on Season 10 and become the first queen of color inducted into the Hall of Fame after winning All-Stars 4. From Georgia O'Keeffe's sensual flower paintings, to Apple's iMac “yum” ads and the infamous Carl's Jr. Paris Hilton burger campaign, we discuss the vast spectrum of desire, the inherent politics and mysticism embedded in the emotion, its evolution, and its impact on culture. The Feelings Lab is a new podcast series from Hume AI. Grab a friend and set out on a journey with our expert hosts and celebrity guests as we explore the new frontier of emotion science and its lessons for creating a more empathic future. Subscribe, and tell a friend to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts! Apple: https://apple.co/3iaXAO7 Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3zM0lvhCheck us out at https://hume.ai LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/hume-ai YouTube: https://bit.ly/3zS3EkqIf you have any questions you'd like answered in an upcoming episode, feel free to send them to thefeelingslab@hume.ai. About Hume AI: Hume AI is an AI research lab and technology company. Our mission is to ensure that future technology is built to serve our emotions, ensuring that as AI gets smarter it remains aligned with our goals.

This week on The Feelings Lab, we're discussing embarrassment! Returning hosts Dr. Alan Cowen, Dr. Dacher Keltner, and Matt Forte will be joined by guest host Dr. Jessica Tracy (Director of the Emotion and Self Lab at the University of British Columbia) and special guest, comedian Ali Kolbert (as seen on The Tonight Show). In this episode, we learn about the surprisingly vital role of embarrassment in our social lives. It's a signal of appeasement that defuses tension, makes us more likable, and helps build our relationships. AND, our dogs may not really feel shame when they break out that “sulky” look that owners know too well - they might just see that it appeases their favorite humans, and keeps the treats coming! The Feelings Lab is a new podcast series from Hume AI. Grab a friend and set out on a journey with our expert hosts and celebrity guests as we explore the new frontier of emotion science and its lessons for creating a more empathic future. Subscribe, and tell a friend to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts! Apple: https://apple.co/3iaXAO7 Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3zM0lvh Check us out at https://hume.ai LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/hume-ai YouTube: https://bit.ly/3zS3Ekq If you have any questions you'd like answered in an upcoming episode, feel free to send them to thefeelingslab@hume.ai. About Hume AI: Hume AI is an AI research lab and technology company. Our mission is to ensure that future technology is built to serve our emotions, ensuring that as AI gets smarter it remains aligned with our goals.

Welcome to The Feelings Lab, a new podcast series from Hume AI. Grab a friend and set out on a journey with our expert hosts and celebrity guests as we explore the new frontier of emotion science and its lessons for creating a more empathic future. In this introductory episode, you'll meet our hosts, learn about the origins of emotion science, discover how advances in big data and statistics are enabling scientists to map our emotions and lend profound new insight into our inner lives, AND find out that mice are actually ticklish! Our Hosts: Dr. Alan Cowen is an applied mathematician and computational emotion scientist who has developed new data-driven methods to study human experience and expression. He is the founder and chief scientist of Hume AI. Dr. Dacher Keltner is a professor of Psychology at UC Berkeley and faculty director of the Greater Good Science Center. Professor Keltner's research focuses on the biological and evolutionary origins of compassion, awe, love, beauty, and humility, as well as power, social class, and inequality. Danielle Krettek Cobb founded Google Empathy Lab in 2015 out of a desire to create humane, prosocial technology informed by empathy, resilience, and wisdom of heart. Matt Forte hosted Verizon's BUILD podcast series, logging hundreds of hours exploring the work of some of today's most prolific creators, actors, authors, musicians, scientists and more. Subscribe, and tell a friend to subscribe! Check us out at https://hume.ai and on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/hume-ai/ If you have any questions you'd like answered in an upcoming episode, feel free to send them to thefeelingslab@hume.ai. Our mission at Hume AI is to ensure that future technology is built to serve our emotions.

In this week's episode of The Feelings Lab, we discuss the emotion of awe. Join our hosts Dr. Alan Cowen, Dr. Dacher Keltner, Danielle Krettek-Cobb, and Matt Forte with guest Tami Simon, founder and publisher of Sounds True, the world's largest living library of transformational teachings that support and accelerate spiritual awakening and personal transformation. Discover what brings about the emotion of awe. How can we more frequently enter the “foothills of awe” and experience it more often in our daily lives? Is awe always a positive feeling? How is awe a source of spirituality? Can animals experience awe? And much more... The Feelings Lab is a new podcast series from Hume AI. Grab a friend and set out on a journey with our expert hosts and celebrity guests as we explore the new frontier of emotion science and its lessons for creating a more empathic future. Subscribe, and tell a friend to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts! Apple: https://apple.co/3iaXAO7 Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3zM0lvh Check us out at https://hume.ai LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/hume-ai YouTube: https://bit.ly/3zS3Ekq If you have any questions you'd like answered in an upcoming episode, feel free to send them to thefeelingslab@hume.ai. About Hume AI: Hume AI is an AI research lab and technology company. Our mission is to ensure that future technology is built to serve our emotions, ensuring that as AI gets smarter it remains aligned with our goals.

This September, Hume AI is launching "The Feelings Lab," a weekly podcast series exploring the new frontier of emotion science and its lessons for creating a more empathic future. From Darwin's forgotten insights on emotion to Pixar's foray into feelings in "Inside Out," join our expert hosts and emotionally-attuned guests each week as we chart out human emotions, their roots in evolution, and their role in shaping the modern world. We'll imagine what it means to consider and care for the full spectrum of human feelings: in living our lives, shaping the future and honoring the emotional connections inside and between all of us. Our hosts: Dr. Alan Cowen, computational emotion scientist, former Google visiting faculty Dr. Dacher Keltner, professor of Psychology at UC Berkeley and faculty director of the Greater Good Science Center Danielle Krettek Cobb, founder of the Google Empathy Lab, former Apple Matt Forte, Verizon BUILD Series host ...and weekly guests We have a feeling it's a podcast you won't want to miss! September 27th - at https://hume.ai and wherever you get your podcasts.