“Beyond ensuring that people everywhere have access to mental health, virtual digital assistants can act as learning companions, using their insight into what motivates and inspires you, to help you study and learn. In this way, AI could be used to level the playing field in education and help narrow socio-economic gaps around the world.”

Egyptian-American computer scientist

Rana el Kaliouby is an Egyptian-American computer scientist and entrepreneur, best known as the co-founder and chief executive of Affectiva, the emotion AI company she started with Rosalind Picard. Her work centers on computers that can recognize and respond to human emotion. As the public face of Affectiva, she has helped shape the conversation around artificial intelligence, affective computing, and how technology interprets facial expressions and other signals of feeling.