I co-founded Affectiva with Professor Rosalind W. Picard when we spun out of MIT Media Lab in 2009. I acted as Chief Technology and Science Officer for several years until becoming CEO mid-2016, one of a handful of female CEOs in the AI space.
I moved to MIT from Stanford in 1984 to teach, and became the founding director of MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab.
The CEO era gave rise to the CFO (not certified flying object, as you might imagine, but chief financial officer) and, most recently, the CIO, chief investment officer, a nice boost for the bookkeeper you can't afford to give a raise . . .
As social media is less about technology and more about relationship building, we are starting to see more women have a heavy influence if not dominant role in the social media space. It's no wonder that Facebook is being run in part by chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg.
The chief executive officer is also the chief sales officer. He or she is responsible for the success of the company and making a profit. The closer the CEO is to the everyday selling process, bringing in business, the more successful the company will become.
In my first company, Seer Technologies, where I was chief technology officer, we shied away from the media. We watched every word and were guarded in front of journalists.
I was at a speaking engagement for MIT... and I said, 'The Professor has all sorts of degrees, including one from this very institution [MIT]! And that's why I can make a radio out of a coconut, and not fix a hole in a boat!'
Democracies stand on several key pillars: Free and fair elections, human rights, the rule of law, and a free untrammeled media. Until 2016, an open media was seen as a resilient democratic pillar that supported the others.
CEOs are often chief product officers. But for me to say I'm a chief product officer when my product is a community, I really should be thinking of myself as head of this community.
My brother is a scientist. He's a professor at MIT. He brought science fiction into my world.
For the first two years of Eventbrite, all the work was done by just the three founders: me, my husband, Kevin, and our chief technology officer, Renaud Visage.
Att our MIT lab, there are people from diverse backgrounds like architecture, psychology, and philosophy, giving a holistic touch to the creation of any technology we may have in mind.
The AI technology will keep you out of harm's way. That is why we believe in an AI car that drives for you.
It is all of our jobs to make sure that women's rights are human rights, and that they do have a place at the table, and we all push toward equality. The leadership numbers for women in business really haven't changed since I began as CEO. There are only 21 female CEOs at Fortune 500 companies, there is only 17 to 19 percent of female representatives in Congress, there are only eight female governors.
Another thing I've observed is how critical the role of the CEO is when a technology truly is disruptive. In looking back on companies that have successfully launched independent disruptive business units, the CEO always had a foot in both camps. Never have they succeeded when they spin something off in order to get it off the CEO's agenda. The CEOs that did this had extraordinary personal self-confidence, and almost always they were the founders of the companies.
As co-founder and CEO of an AI company, I am used to there not being many women in the room, especially in AI.
At MIT, in Professor Rodney Brooks' lab, I was involved in a project, led by Anita Flynn, to build robots using techniques similar to those used in building silicon chips. We got some silicon micro-machined motors to move a bit, but this didn't lead to an actual product.