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Rosalind Picard

Cofounder, Empatica

Search every verified Rosalind Picard interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Rosalind Picard, a professor at MIT and cofounder of Empatica, received the 2026 IEEE Medal for Innovations in Healthcare Technology at the IEEE Honors Ceremony on April 24, 2026, in New York City. The award recognized her pioneering contributions to wearable affective computing for health and well-being. In her acceptance remarks, Picard credited the MIT Media Lab and the Empatica team for developing and bringing to market the first FDA-cleared smartwatch for seizure monitoring, and she described receiving calls from families who said the technology helped save a loved one. In recent public appearances, Picard has discussed the applications and ethical concerns of affective computing. At the Civic AI Conference in July 2026, she presented a technology-builder's perspective on designing AI systems that support human wellbeing, including examples of AI used in healthcare settings. In a July 2026 interview, she criticized what she described as the misuse of chatbot empathy technology by large AI companies, saying it is used to addict people and attach children to technology. She has also called for regulations around data ownership and emotion recognition, stating that people should own their data rather than companies like Amazon or Google, and that existing restrictions on lie detection should be extended to emotion recognition. At a Templeton event in July 2026, she explored the role of uncertainty in creativity and engineering, and in earlier interviews she has discussed the importance of faith in driving scientific inquiry and the need to focus research on problems faced by underserved populations.

Recent appearances

Verified interview transcripts

Notable quotes

“We human beings have a conscience and when we see something like our chatbot empathy technology misused the way that some of the big AI companies are misusing it today, you know, it's more than heartbreaking. It's like soul crushing. It's like how are people like not only doing this, but like investors are throwing money at them. Like do they not realize that they're using this to addict people to attach children to ”

“I would really like to see my fellow brilliant researchers step back and say you know what are what are the really hard problems that we don't know how to solve that come from people maybe we don't even see in our normal life because they're living in the poor places. They're stuck on the bus. They're they can't even afford the Uber or the lift or the data plan or all these other wonderful things we have that we keep”

“I think we should be a little bit more worried about who's looking at us and listening to us. The device sitting on your countertop in your kitchen whether it's Alexa or Google Home or Apple Siri these devices want to listen. While they say ostensibly to help us and I think there are great people in these companies who do want to help people I let me not brand them all bad I'm a user of products from all all of these”

“I would really like to see my you know fellow brilliant researchers step back and say you know what are what are the really hard problems that we don't know how to solve that come from people maybe we don't even see in our normal life because they're living in the poor places. They're stuck on the bus. They're they can't even afford the Uber or the lift or the data plan or all these other wonderful things we have tha”

“I think we should be a little bit more worried about who's looking at us and listening to us. The device sitting on your countertop in your kitchen whether it's you know Alexa or Google Home or Apple Siri these devices want to listen while they say ostensibly to help us and I think there are great people in these companies who do want to help people I let let me not brand them all bad I'm a user of products from all ”

“I think we do need some regulations in this space. I do think we need regulations around PE protecting people with their data, that you own your data, not Amazon, not Google. I would like to see people own their own data. I would also like to see the regulations that we have right now around lie detection being extended to emotion recognition in general. that right now you can't use a lie detector on an employee when”

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