AI Startup Aims for Emotional Intelligence Breakthrough

Former OpenAI researcher Alexis Conneau has launched WaveForms, a startup focused on developing AI with emotional general intelligence (EGI) capabilities, backed by $40 million in seed funding from a16z. The company aims to enhance AI's ability to understand and respond to spoken language nuances, such as tone and inflection, which current AI assistants like Alexa and Siri lack. Conneau's departure from OpenAI was driven by his desire to focus on audio AI as a "social-emotional layer" of artificial general intelligence.