The affective-computing pioneer’s own company ended up doing surveillance capitalism

Evidence

Picard would eventually become part of this new dispossession industry with a company called Affectiva that was cofounded with Rana el Kaliouby, an MIT Media Lab postdoctoral research scientist and Picard protégé. The company’s transformation from doing good to doing surveillance capitalism is a metaphor for the fate of the larger undertaking of emotion analysis as it is rapidly drawn into the competitive maelstrom for surveillance revenues. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 895

Categorization

• SEED: The innocence-to-dispossession arc of a well-intentioned founder is a strong essay thread: ‘the iron filings effect’ as a repeated pattern in tech ethics, contrasting Picard’s trajectory with industry claims of responsible AI.
• XREF: connects to: Affective computing’s originator warned of its commercial exploitation risks. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 891; Surveillance capitalism mines intimate personality and emotional data for profit — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 624; Market forces redirected affective computing from empowerment into commercial surveillance — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 909

Broader Connections

• Market forces redirected affective computing from empowerment into commercial surveillance #corroborates (0.90) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 909
• Surveillance capitalism mines intimate personality and emotional data for profit #corroborates (0.85) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 624