Optimizing AI for User Well-Being

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.

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Timestamps:

1. Dan tells Hume’s empathetic AI model a secret: 00:00:00

2. Introduction: 00:01:13

3. What traditional psychology tells us about emotions: 00:10:17

4. Alan’s radical approach to studying human emotion: 00:13:46 

5. Methods that Hume’s AI model uses to understand emotion: 00:16:46 

6. How the model accounts for individual differences: 00:21:08

7. Dan’s pet theory on why it’s been hard to make progress in psychology: 00:27:19

8. The ways in which Alan thinks Hume can be used: 00:38:12

9. How Alan is thinking about the API v. consumer product question: 00:41:22

10. 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