Rana el Kaliouby on teaching computers to read our emotions

Amy Barrett: So Girl Decoded was published earlier this year by Penguin Business. Can you tell me, what is your book about? Rana el Kaliouby: So my book is a memoir. It's a juxtaposition of my personal journey intertwined with my journey building emotional intelligence into technology. AB: What made you actually want to start writing it? ReK: So the initial idea was to talk about emotion A.I. or artificial emotional intelligence and kind of tease apart the different applications of the technology and the ethical and moral implications of building technology like that. But very early on, I remember meeting with the publisher Penguin, Random House, and the editor there said, you know, your story is really fascinating. I grew up in the Middle East, found my way to the US by way of studying in the UK, actually. Ane he said, that's the story, you got to interweave your personal stories. So it ended up being this, again, kind of inter woven mix of my personal background and how I went from what I call "a nice Egyptian girl" to a CEO of a tech company. AB: And what some of the biggest challenges you say you faced to getting where you are today? ReK: I think the biggest kind of challenge is that I was always kind of doing some… I'm a misfit. Like, I grew up in the Middle East, but I really wanted to be a computer scientist. I left home to do my PhD, which was quite unusual at the time because my husband at the time had to stay back in Cairo for work.