The Unexpected Profit Plan for Emotional Computing

The idea of computers capable of reading our emotions and responding to them is both fascinating and terrifying. Will this technology serve us or manipulate us?

Well, the speculation is ending because the technology not only exists, but it is being rolled out commercially.

Today I'd like you to meet Hazumu Yamazaki, co-founder of Empath. Empath is a web-based API that detects human emotion from audio data, and its initial use in call-centers has shown a significant increase in sales. But as Hazumu explains, the potential effects are much larger.

It's an enlightening conversation, and I think you'll enjoy it.


Show Notes

How emotion detection is being used in commerce
How easy is it to emotionally manipulate us into buying something?
The hardest thing to get right about corporate spinouts
Why detecting emotions at scale will make money
The true killer app for emotional recognition
How startups can use pitch competitions & accelerators strategically
How Japanese startup founders should act while overseas
What Japanese founders can really learn from their overseas counterparts


Links from the Founder

Everything you wanted to know about Empath
Friend Hazumu on Facebook
Connect with him on LinkedIn
Pitch training at Slush Tokyo
Empath on Orange Blog
Announcement for ICT 2019 Keynote

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Transcript
Welcome to Disrupting Japan, straight talk from Japan’s most successful entrepreneurs.

I’m Siri and thanks for joining me. Today, I’d like to talk with you about –

Hey, Siri, why are you doing the podcast intro?

Hi Tim, I’ve noticed you’ve been very busy and seemed a little stressed, so I thought I would help out with this week’s podcast.

I appreciate that, but I enjoy doing the podcasts, so I think I’ve got this.

Okay, Tim. You know where to find me if you need me.

Thanks, Siri.

There is no doubt that computers, that artificial intelligence getting better at understanding our emotions, and when we think about the application for that emotional connection, we usually think of things we interact with directly, like personal assistance, like Siri. But it doesn’t look like that’s going to be its primary use, and it’s certainly not going to be the most profitable use of this technology.

Today, I’d like to introduce you to Hazumu Yamazaki, the co-founder of Empath. Now, Empath is an AI system that can determine your emotional state by listening to how you speak, so Empath does not need to understand what you are saying, but by listening to how you speak, it can quite accurately determine whether you are feeling calm, anger, joy, or sorrow.

The first commercial use of this technology has been in call centers and customer contact centers where it’s improved sales by as much as 20%, and yeah, this does open up some serious ethical issues over emotional manipulation that we are going to get into a bit during our conversation and get into a lot more in the comments at the end of this episode.

But along the way, we will talk about how a modern version of build it and they will come might just be a viable marketing strategies. The key to making corporate spinouts worked in Japan, and a different way for Japanese startups to go global.

But you know, Hazumu tells the story much better than I can, so let’s get right to the interview.

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Interview                                                                                
Tim: So, we are sitting here with Hazumu Yamazaki, the cofounder of Empath, so thanks for sitting down with me.

Hazumu: Yeah, thank you for having me today.

Tim: Now, Empath is a technology that detects emotion in human voice, but you can probably explain it a lot better than I can.

Hazumu: Sure. So, we developed Empath which is an emotion AI that can identify emotion from your voice,