How to be the steward of your idea, w/Affectiva's Rana el Kaliouby
Masters of Scale
WaitWhat
4.6 • 4.4K Ratings
🗓️ 2 February 2021
⏱️ 42 minutes
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Summary
Great entrepreneurs aren't just product obsessed; they're impact obsessed. Rana el Kaliouby, co-founder and CEO of Affectiva, has spent most of her career thinking about how to project – and steward – the possible uses of artificial intelligence. Affectiva uses AI to read people's emotional states, but Rana won't put her software to work for just anyone. She's walking a fine line between thoughtfully nurturing her idea and being a cranky custodian: potentially throttling the scale of her business. It's a risk she's willing to take. She understands that entrepreneurship isn't just about providing a product or service that people love, or creating jobs; it's about asking: "Am I making a net contribution to society – not just right now, but for future generations?"
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, it's Bob Safian. You've been hearing me as the host of rapid response in this feed for a few years now, |
| 0:07.8 | with short newsy interviews alongside the deeper dives of Masters of Scale. Well, I'm excited to share that rapid response is expanding into its own feed. |
| 0:17.0 | We'll be putting out shows twice a week, focusing on the urgent issues that business leaders are dealing with in real time. |
| 0:24.8 | So search for rapid response in your podcast player |
| 0:28.0 | and subscribe to make sure you get all our episodes. |
| 0:31.2 | I'll see you on the other side. |
| 0:34.0 | I hope you're wrapped up warmly |
| 0:36.0 | because we're about to travel to a remote vault |
| 0:38.0 | buried in a snow-covered Norwegian mountain encased in permafrost. |
| 0:42.8 | It's located in Salt Bard Archipelago, which is quite, quite far away from mainland Norway. |
| 0:54.0 | Well beyond the Arctic Circle, so you actually can take commercial flights to a town called Long Yerbian. |
| 1:00.0 | When you land and you sort of look out through the snowy landscape up the side of the mountain, |
| 1:06.8 | you can see this bluish glimmer that is emerging there in vast field of snow and rocks. |
| 1:16.0 | And especially when you land in darkness during the winter, |
| 1:19.0 | it looks magical, it looks mysterious. |
| 1:30.9 | That's Hanus Dempowulf, director of external affairs and a senior scientist at the Global Crop Diversity Trust, or Crop Trust for short. |
| 1:34.0 | He's describing the approach to the Sevalbard Global Seed Vault. |
| 1:40.0 | So there's this winding road going up to the mountain side. |
| 1:44.5 | And ultimately you see this wedge that's protruding out of the ground. |
| 1:50.3 | And that is the entrance portal of the seatwalt. |
| 1:54.0 | The vault was built in 2008 to protect something far more valuable than bullion or Bitcoin. |
| 2:00.0 | It's a depository for millions of seeds, accounting for thousands of varieties of the world's most important food crops. |
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