ETW Company Spotlight — Behavioral Signals
“If you could have one superpower, what would it be?”
Flying?
Super speed?
Invisibility?
How about mind reading?
Not so fast…
“Superpower” implies a detachment from reality. As researchers of emotion recognition technology might argue, “mind reading” should no longer be equated to fantasy.
Meet Shri Narayanan and Alex Potamianos, founders of Behavioral Signals. The two (along with Prem Natarajan) have built a startup that provides companies a looking glass into the raw emotion hidden within the human psyche. In other words, they know what you’re feeling (even if you don’t).
Shri and Alex met at AT&T Bell Labs in the mid 90’s, working on the frontier of speech recognition technology. At the time, the world-renowned research lab was producing the evolutionary precursors to the likes of Siri and Amazon Echo.
First, they built tech that could decode a person’s voice. But they didn’t stop there. They wanted to decipher human emotion. It wasn’t enough that a piece of software could translate audio into text. They imagined translating audio into feeling.
“The field is still very new,” says Alex. “But consider the facts. Human emotion drives our interactions and decisions. The ability to analyze emotion on this new level is the ability to understand human communication.”
“Behavioral Signal Processing” use cases are endless and Alex and Shri are applying the technology across an array of problems. When asked to dream up the future, their eyes light up. Imagine the parole officer able to better understand the contrition of the convict. Or the doctor able to quantify the effectiveness of their bedside manner.
More immediately for Shri and Alex’s company, this technology is a game-changer in the world of customer service. Sales calls, support interactions, and training role-plays are suddenly measurable in a very new way. Authenticity, humility, courage, anger, impatience… these are now measurable variables.
“A lot of our work revolves around the concept of empathy,” says Shri. “The success of so many interactions is linked to one’s ability to feel for their communication partner. With just an ounce of practical thinking, it’s easy to take this idea and run with it.”
Take health care for example. AI likely will never replace the intimacy of a patient-doctor interaction. But emotion recognition may improve how we diagnose serious issues, like mental illness.
As Alex says, “The possibilities are endless… and powerful.”
Emotion recognition will hit mainstream markets in coming years. This is not technology for technology’s sake. The founders believe that humanity will be served well. Measurement is the prerequisite for improvement. If we’re failing to evoke curiosity, openness, or understanding from those with whom we’re speaking, with data in hand, we can try, try again.
As for Shri and Alex, the current offerings at Behavioral Signals are just the beginning. With a firm understanding of their field’s potential, they will continue pioneering innovations that are poised to diffuse.
Upon finishing our interview, Alex was kind enough to compliment my interviewing skills. He appreciated my genuine interest in his company. I was tempted to ask him how I (emotionally) scored, but chose not to ask.
