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Rosalind Picard

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Rosalind Picard at the Veritas Forum Science, Faith, and Technology session on "Living Machines: Can Robots Become Human?"

Rosalind W. Picard (born May 17, 1962 in Massachusetts) is director of the Affective Computing Research Group at the MIT Media Lab, and co-director of the Things That Think Consortium. Picard is the author of Affective Computing, published in 1997. In 2005, she was named a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

Academics

Professor Picard holds a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering and a certificate in computer engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology (1984), and master's (1986) and doctorate degrees (1991), both in electrical engineering and computer science, from MIT. Her thesis was titled Texture Modeling: Temperature Effects on Markov/Gibbs Random Fields. She has been a member of the faculty at the MIT Media Laboratory since 1991, with tenure since 1998 and a full professorship since 2005.

Picard is a researcher in the field of affective computing and the founder and director of the Affective Computing Research Group at the MIT Media Lab. The Affective Computing Research Group develops tools, techniques, and devices for sensing, interpreting, and processing emotion signals that drive state-of-the-art systems which respond intelligently to human emotional states. Applications of their research include improved tutoring systems and assistive technology for use in addressing the verbal communications difficulties experienced by individuals with autism.

Affective Computing

While working in the field of affective computing, Picard published Affective Computing. MIT's press release for Picard's textbook states, "According to Rosalind Picard, if we want computers to be genuinely intelligent and to interact naturally with us, we must give computers the ability to recognize, understand, even to have and express emotions." In order to portray how such an understanding would alter interactions with robots, Picard gave an example situation:

Imagine your robot entering the kitchen as you prepare breakfast for guests. The robot looks happy to see you and greets you with a cheery "Good morning." You mumble something it does not understand. It notices your face, vocal tone, smoke above the stove, and your slamming of a pot into the sink, and infers that you do not appear to be having a good morning. Immediately, it adjusts its internal state to "subdued," which has the effect of lowering its vocal pitch and amplitude settings, eliminating cheery behavioral displays, and suppressing unnecessary conversation. Suppose you exclaim, "Ow!!" yanking your hand from the hot stove, rushing to run your fingers under cold water, adding "I can't believe I ruined the sauce." While the robot's speech recognition may not have high confidence that it accurately recognized all of your words, its assessment of your affect and actions indicates a high probability that you are upset and maybe hurt.

In such a situation, it is necessary for the robots to understand the emotional aspects of humans in order to better serve their intended purpose.

This work has influenced many fields beyond computer science, ranging from video games to law. One critic described the book as having a "bold vision" that will inspire some and irritate others. Other critics emphasize the importance behind the work as it establishes an important framework for the field as a whole.

Faith

Picard is a practicing Christian, and has stated that her work in the field of affective computing, examining the complexity and functioning of the human mind, has greatly influenced her faith. She is one of the signatories of the Discovery Institute's controversial petition "A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism which has been used in campaigns to discredit evolution and to promote the teaching of intelligent design in public schools. In a 2007 interview she raised the idea of a "greater mind" making some intervention beyond random processes in the complexity of DNA, but expressed reservations about intelligent design, saying that people of faith should challenge it and be more skeptical.Cite error: A <ref> tag is missing the closing </ref> (see the help page).

Patents/Patents Pending
  • “Method and Apparatus for Relating and Combining Multiple Images of the Same Scene or Object(s)” U.S. Patent 5,706,416. Issued January 6, 1998. (With Steve Mann.)
  • “Sensing and Display of Skin Conductivity” U.S. Patent 6415176. Issued July 2, 2002. (With Jocelyn Scheirer, Nancy Tilbury and Jonathan Farringdon.)
  • “System and Method for Determining a Workload Level of a Driver” (With Walton L. Fehr, Judith L. Gardner and John R. Hansman) Docket No. IS01739AIC

References

  1. ^ "Media Lab Faculty Biography". MIT Media Lab. Retrieved 2008-05-05.
  2. ^ "Publication of Affective Computing". MIT Press. Retrieved 2008-05-05.
  3. "2005 Fellows". IEEE Boston. 2005. Retrieved 2008-05-05.
  4. "Faculty members awarded tenure". MIT News Office. 2005-06-01. Retrieved 2008-05-05.
  5. "Research Projects of the Affective Computing Research Group". MIT. Retrieved 2008-05-05.
  6. "Affective Computing Group web page". MIT. Retrieved 2008-05-05.
  7. "Affective Computing Group - Current and Past Projects". MIT. Retrieved 2008-05-05.
  8. http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Affective_computing (article by R.Picard)
  9. Binkley, Timothy (1998), "Autonomous Creations: Birthing Intelligent Agents", Leonardo, 31 (5): 336
  10. Huang, Peter H. (January 2002), "International Environmental Law and Emotional Rational Choice", The Journal of Legal Studies, 31 (1): S245
  11. Sloman, Aaron (1999), Review of Affective Computing, AI Magazine
  12. Diehl, Stanford (February 2008). "Book Review: A Computer to Love". Byte. Retrieved 2008-05-05.
  13. Harvey Blume (1998-04-29). "A Function Specific to Joy". The Atlantic Monthly. Retrieved 2008-05-05.
  14. "Personal homepage of Rosalind W. Picard". MIT. Retrieved 2008-05-05.
  15. "Signatories of 'A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism'" (PDF). The Discovery Institute. April 2008. Retrieved 2008-05-05.
  16. Kenneth Chang (2006-02-21). "Few Biologists but Many Evangelicals Sign Anti-Evolution Petition". New York Times. Retrieved 2008-05-05.

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