The founder who wanted medical applications was pushed out of her own startup

Evidence

It wasn’t long before the new company found itself fielding significant interest from ad agencies and marketing firms itching for automated rendition and analysis from the depths. Describing that time, as Picard told one journalist, “Our CEO was absolutely not comfortable with the medical space.” As a result, Picard was “pushed out” of the firm three years after its founding. As an Affectiva researcher recounted, “We began with a powerful set of products that could assist people who have a very difficult time with perceiving affect.… Then they started to emphasize only the face, to focus on advertisements, and on predicting whether someone likes a product, and just went totally off the original mission.” — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 897

Categorization

• XREF: Contrasts sharply with the medical origins; connects to the book’s argument that surveillance capitalism reorients every technology toward prediction.