Girl Decoded

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

We are entering an empathy crisis. Most of our communication is conveyed through non-verbal cues - facial expressions, tone of voice, body language - nuances that are completely lost when we interact through our smartphones and other technology. The result is a digital universe that's emotion-blind - a society lacking in empathy.

Rana al Kaloubi discovered this when she left Cairo, a newly-married, Muslim woman, to take up her place at Cambridge University to study computer science. Many thousands of miles from home, she began to develop systems to help her better connect with her family. She started to pioneer the new field of Emotional Intelligence (EI). She now runs her company, Affectiva (the industry-leader in this emerging field) that builds EI into our technology and develops systems that understand humans the way we understand one another.

In a captivating memoir, Girl Decoded chronicles el Kaliouby's mission to humanise technology and what she learns about humanity along the way.

©Rana el Kaliouby 2020 (P) Penguin Audio 2020

Critics Review

  • Girl Decoded is the kind of honest and inspiring story that will encourage other women to share their experiences and own their power

    Tory Burch, founder and executive chairman of Tory Burch LLC

  • Rana el Kaliouby’s vision for how technology should work in parallel with empathy is bold, inspired and hopeful

    Arianna Huffington, founder and CEO of Thrive Global

  • Her remarkable life story is a captivating way to understand this new technological frontier: machines with emotional intelligence

    Kevin Kelly, futurist, founding editor of Wired, and author of The Inevitable

  • A poignant and deeply personal tale about love, loss, and coming of age on a new scientific frontier

    Daniel Gilbert, professor of psychology at Harvard University and author of Stumbling on Happiness

  • Creating a hopeful, compelling, and abundant future for humanity depends on the work outlined by entrepreneur Rana el Kaliouby in her must-read book, Girl Decoded. It is critical that we embrace a future in which technology enhances our most human qualities, specifically empathy, caring, and emotional intelligence

    Peter Diamandis, founder and chairman of the XPRIZE Foundation and coauthor of The Future Is Faster Than You Think

  • Emotional intelligence in AI is every bit as critical for machines as it is for humans. No one has done more to create that capability than Rana el Kaliouby. This book tells the remarkable story of her pioneering journey, breaking barriers all along the way. A must-read!

    Erik Brynjolfsson, professor at MIT Sloan School of Management and coauthor of The Second Machine Age and Machine, Platform, Crowd

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