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Cynthia Breazeal

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Cynthia Breazeal
Born (1967-11-15) November 15, 1967 (age 57)
Albuquerque, New Mexico, US
NationalityAmerican
Alma materUniversity of California, Santa Barbara (B.S., EECS, 1989)
MIT (S.M., 1993; Sc.D., 2000)
Known forRobotics, Jibo, and K-12 AI literacy
Scientific career
FieldsComputer science, robotics
Doctoral advisorRodney Brooks

Cynthia Breazeal is an American AI and robotics scientist and entrepreneur. She is a pioneer of social robotics and human-robot interaction. She is the former chief scientist and chief experience officer of Jibo, a company she co-founded in 2012 that developed companion robots for the family at home. Currently, she is a professor of media arts and sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she is the director of the Personal Robots Group at the MIT Media Lab,[1] dean for digital learning at MIT Open Learning,[2] and director of the MIT RAISE Initiative.[3] Her work has explored the theme of living everyday life in the presence of AI and, in recent years, has focused on AI literacy for youth.[4]

Early life and education

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As the daughter of two computer scientists working in national labs,[5] she had early access to the fields of computer science and engineering. Breazeal earned a B.Sc in electrical and computer engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara,[6][7] in 1989; her M.S. in 1993; and her Sc.D. in 2000 in electrical engineering and computer science, both from MIT. Inspired by the droids in Star Wars since childhood, and after watching NASA land a robot on Mars in 1997, she wondered why robots had made it to Mars but not into everyday life of people.[8] This inspired her to switch her focus to build the world's first social robot, Kismet, and pioneer the field of social robotics.

Breazeal developed the robot Kismet as a doctoral thesis under Rodney Brooks.[9] The robot looked into the expressive social-emotional exchange between humans and autonomous robots, and the development of social and emotional intelligence of robots that collaborate with people as partners. Kismet, as well as other robots Breazeal co-developed while a graduate student at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab, have been on display in the MIT Museum from 2000.[10]

MIT career

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Breazeal is a professor of Media Arts and Sciences at MIT, where she founded and directs the Personal Robots Group.[11] She has written several books in the field of AI robotics and has published hundreds of highly-cited peer-reviewed papers on the topic. She also serves on multiple editorial boards for autonomous and various other robotic committees.[12] Breazeal's work examines social embodiment in robots that interact with people using natural verbal, paralinguistic, and non-verbal cues such as gaze, emotions, and posture on human emotional engagement.[13] She did early explorations of social embodiment on robotic telepresence.[14] She also investigates long-term interaction with robots, and the impact of rapport and building relationship on human outcomes in domains like health, wellness, and education.

Breazeal has centered her work around the concept of "living with AI,"[15] studying the impact of incorporating social robots into our everyday lives, adding social-emotional engagement, rapport, and relationship to AI. Her goal is to help people in achieving long-term goals in areas where sustained social support is known to be key for human outcomes, such as behavior change, coaching, tutoring, and more.

In January 2022, Breazeal was named as dean for digital learning at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). As dean, Breazeal leads MIT Open Learning's revenue-generating professional education and research portfolio, identifying the areas for technical and pedagogical innovation, while researching how different methods and technologies can improve digital learning.[16] With professors Eric Klopfer and Hal Abelson, she then launched the MIT RAISE Initiative in 2021 to research and drive the creative, responsible design and ethical use of AI, particularly in the context of K-12 education.[17]

Social robots and the Personal Robots Group

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Early robots

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Leonardo was one of Breazeal's earliest robots, co-developed with Stan Winston Studio, and a successor to Kismet (recognized in 2006 by Wired magazine as one of the "50 Best Robots Ever").[18] Leonardo was also used to investigate social cognition and theory of mind abilities on robots with application to human-robot collaboration, in addition to developing social learning abilities for robots such as imitation, tutelage, and social referencing. Nexi[19] was another of Breazeal's robots in this tradition and was named by Time magazine as one of the 50 Best Inventions of 2008.[20] Nexi is an MDS robot (mobile, dexterous, social) that combines social communication abilities with mobile dexterity to investigate more complex forms of human-robot teaming.

Breazeal has also been part of creating a robotic flower garden installation, Cyberflora which was exhibited at the 2003 National Design Triennial[21] at the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.

Breazeal's Personal Robots Group at the MIT Media Lab has produced a number of real-world robot design projects and publications covering topics such as education, health and wellness, aging, psychology, personalization, and advancing the social and emotional intelligence of AI and robots. Autom,[22] was a robot diet and exercise coach developed by Breazeal's Ph.D. student Cory Kidd;[23] research found Autom to be more effective than a computer counterpart in sustaining engagement and building trust and a working alliance with users. Breazeal's group has also explored expressive remote presence robots such as MeBot, whose physical social embodiment was found to elicit greater psychological involvement, engagement, and desire to cooperate over purely screen-based video conferencing or a mobile screen.[24] There is also the Huggable, which was designed as a pediatric companion to help support the emotional needs of hospitalized children and to help support and augment child life specialists.[25] The Tega robot was developed as a personalized learning companion for young children for early childhood language and literacy development. Instead of engaging children as a tutor, the robot plays educational games as a peer-like companion.[26] Tega has been used in numerous studies with children to show its adaptive personalization of content along with its social and emotional support during peer-like interactions. Tega helps with improved language and literacy skills[27], but it can also foster children’s increased growth mindset, curiosity[28], and creativity.[29]

AI and education

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In recent years Breazeal's work has expanded into AI and education, and she now leads MIT's Responsible AI for Social Empowerment and Education initiative.[30] RAISE's focus is on educating primary through high school-aged students in the creative and ethical use of AI, with free resources for use in the classroom and teacher professional development. MIT RAISE pursues a constructionist pedagogical approach called computational action that fosters critical thinking, teamwork, and creative problem solving and expression. In 2021, MIT RAISE created the MIT FutureMakers program, "a free, six-week summer program that inspires and trains high school and early college students how to design with AI and digital technologies to be positive change makers in their communities."

The same year, MIT RAISE launched Day of AI in collaboration with i2 Learning president Ethan Berman. MIT RAISE has developed innovative, free, and open AI curricula, AI-powered tools to support learning-by-making, and professional development for K-12. To date, tens of thousands of teachers and over a million students have learned AI literacy in 50 U.S. states and 170 countries.[31] RAISE has received significant funding from Google and DP World, among others.[32]

As MIT broadly has taken on a more prominent role in AI policy,[33] Breazeal co-authored papers on AI's risks and rewards for career pathways in secondary education[34] and, for a government audience, a brief on the "proper use of AI in education".[35]

Research impact

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Breazeal's research publications have over 40,000 citations on Google Scholar and an h-index of 100, meaning she has authored or co-authored more than 100 publications, each cited more than 100 times.[36] (A typical h-index for a computer science senior scholar is generally between 30 and 60.[37]) Breazeal's most influential publications are her early ones that pioneer social robots. Publications co-authored with her graduate students have become sources for large-language models in health,[38] K-12 AI literacy,[39] AI and ethics[40], social robot learning companions for children[41], and long-term HRI studies in real-world environments.[42]

Industry work

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Jibo

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On July 16, 2014, Breazeal launched an Indiegogo campaign to crowdfund the development of Jibo, a personal assistant robot widely marketed as the world's first family robot.[43] She served as chief scientist and chief experience officer.[15] Jibo[44] had a successful crowd-funding campaign on Indiegogo and reached its series A fundraising goal of $70 million.[45] Jibo was released in November 2017.[46] The robot was created to be a helpful companion that could bring “content to life” in a new way beyond flat screens. Jibo was designed to interact with people with more engaging social experiences, including storytelling, game play, and other forms of entertainment. It also supported a range of practical skills that leveraged machine vision such as being an interactive photographer, recognizing people to deliver news and weather in a personalized report, IoT control with an IFTTT integration, music with iHeartRadio, and more.

Jibo generally received positive reviews for its innovative user experience, however, it offered many fewer skills than Amazon Alexa and Google Home which were much less expensive.[47] The company failed to raise series B funding and in March 2020, the assets of Jibo Inc. were acquired by by NTT Corporation for healthcare and education markets.[48]

Awards and recognition

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Breazeal served as a consultant on the 2001 Spielberg-Kubric movie A.I. Artificial Intelligence.[49] She also has a prominent role as a virtual participant in a popular exhibit on robots with the traveling exhibit, Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination, interacting with a real C-3PO (voiced by Anthony Daniels) as she spoke to the audience through a pre-recorded message displayed on a large plasma flat-screen display.[50]

In 2003, she was named by the MITTechnology Review TR100 as one of the top 100 innovators in the world under the age of thirty-five.[51] That same year, she was recogized as a finalist for the National Design Award in Communication.[52]

In 2008, she received the Gilbreth Lectures Award by the National Academy of Engineering. Her Nexi robot was named one of Time magazine's Best Inventions of 2008.[20]

In 2014, Breazeal was recognized as an entrepreneur as Fortune magazine's Most Promising Women Entrepreneurs, and she was also a recipient of the L'Oreal USA Women in Digital NEXT Generation Award. The same year, she received the 2014 George R. Stibitz Computer & Communications Pioneer Award for seminal contributions to the development of Social Robotics and Human Robot Interaction.[53]

In 2015, Breazeal was named by Entrepreneur magazine as one of the Women to Watch.[54] That same year, Jibo was recognized as a winner of the Core77 Design Awards in the Products category.[55]

Jibo was featured on the cover of Time magazine's 25 Best Inventions of 2017.[56]

In 2020, she was elected a AAAI Fellow by the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence.[57]

In March 2020, during the SARS-CoV2 pandemic, Breazeal and her team launched a site with over 60 activities, so students can get access to STEM activities from the lockdown to help teachers and parents continue education from home.[58]

In 2023, she was named in Forbes 50 Over 50.[59]

In 2024, she was awarded the $50K Robotics Medal for Pioneering Women in Robotics by MassRobotics.[60]

Selected works

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Books

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  • Breazeal, Cynthia (2002). Designing Sociable Robots. The MIT Press. ISBN 0262025108.
  • Breazeal, Cynthia; Bar-Cohen, Yoseph (2003). Biologically Inspired Intelligent Robots. Bellingham, Washington: SPIE (The International Society for Optical Engineering). ISBN 0-8194-4872-9.

Selected Articles, Papers, and Chapters

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References

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  1. ^ Breazeal, Cynthia (2023). "Bio - Cynthia Breazeal". Retrieved 2023-03-02.
  2. ^ "Cynthia Breazeal | Open Learning". openlearning.mit.edu. Retrieved 2025-03-03.
  3. ^ "MIT Teams – MIT RAISE: Responsible AI for Social Empowerment and Education". Retrieved 2025-03-03.
  4. ^ "Cynthia Breazeal – MIT RAISE: Responsible AI for Social Empowerment and Education". Retrieved 2025-03-03.
  5. ^ Ford, Martin (2018-11-23). Architects of Intelligence: The truth about AI from the people building it. Packt Publishing Ltd. p. 448. ISBN 978-1-78913-126-0.
  6. ^ "Cynthia Breazeal: Social robotics pioneer. MIT lab leader. Proud mom". Yahoo News. 2015-02-06. Retrieved 2025-03-05.
  7. ^ "Dr. Cynthia Breazeal – The WICT Network". wict.org.
  8. ^ "Cynthia Breazeal". thegentlewoman.co.uk. Retrieved 2025-03-05.
  9. ^ Breazeal, Cynthia L. (Cynthia Lynn) (2000). Sociable machines : expressive social exchange between humans and robots (Thesis thesis). Massachusetts Institute of Technology. hdl:1721.1/9303.
  10. ^ "Robots and Beyond: Exploring Artificial Intelligence at MIT - 2000". MIT Museum. Retrieved 2025-03-05.
  11. ^ "Person Overview ‹ Cynthia Breazeal". MIT Media Lab. Retrieved 2021-05-12.
  12. ^ "Transcript of "The rise of personal robots"". 8 February 2011.
  13. ^ Breazeal, C.; Scassellati, B. (October 1999). "How to build robots that make friends and influence people". Proceedings 1999 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems. Human and Environment Friendly Robots with High Intelligence and Emotional Quotients (Cat. No.99CH36289). Vol. 2. pp. 858–863 vol.2. doi:10.1109/IROS.1999.812787. ISBN 0-7803-5184-3.
  14. ^ Adalgeirsson, Sigurdur Orn; Breazeal, Cynthia (March 2010). "MeBot: A robotic platform for socially embodied telepresence". 2010 5th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). pp. 15–22. doi:10.1109/HRI.2010.5453272. hdl:1721.1/61953. ISBN 978-1-4244-4892-0.
  15. ^ a b "Person Overview ‹ Cynthia Breazeal". MIT Media Lab. Retrieved 2025-03-21.
  16. ^ Breazeal, Cynthia. "Cynthia Breazeal named dean for digital learning at MIT". MIT Media Lab. Retrieved 2022-12-15.
  17. ^ MIT Office of Digital Learning (2024-11-22). RAISE Initiative 2024. Retrieved 2025-03-12 – via YouTube.
  18. ^ "The 50 Best Robots Ever". Wired. Retrieved 2018-10-13.
  19. ^ "Meet Nexi, the Media Lab's latest robot and Internet star". MIT News. Retrieved 2018-10-13.
  20. ^ a b "Best Inventions of 2008: The Mobile, Dexterous, Social Robot". Time. 2008. Retrieved September 27, 2021.
  21. ^ Lupton, Eileen; Cooper-Hewitt Museum (2003). Inside design now : National Design Triennial. New York, N.Y.: Princeton Architectural Press. ISBN 1568983948.
  22. ^ "Autom - Papers". Personal Robots Group. Retrieved 2018-10-13.
  23. ^ Cory Kidd, Designing for Long-Term Human-Robot Interaction and Application to Weight Loss. January 2008. Ph.D. Media Arts and Sciences, MIT.[1] Archived 2016-12-06 at the Wayback Machine
  24. ^ Papacharissi, Zizi (2018-07-11). A Networked Self and Human Augmentics, Artificial Intelligence, Sentience. Routledge. ISBN 9781351783996.
  25. ^ "'Huggable,' a social robot for kids, eases hospital stress". Retrieved 2019-06-23.
  26. ^ Kory Westlund, Jacqueline; Lee, Jin Joo; Plummer, Luke; Faridi, Fardad; Gray, Jesse; Berlin, Matt; Quintus-Bosz, Harald; Hartmann, Robert; Hess, Mike; Dyer, Stacy; dos Santos, Kristopher; Örn Aðalgeirsson, Sigurður; Gordon, Goren; Spaulding, Samuel; Martinez, Marayna (2016-03-07). "Tega: A Social Robot". The Eleventh ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human Robot Interaction. HRI '16. Christchurch, New Zealand: IEEE Press: 561. ISBN 978-1-4673-8370-7.
  27. ^ Kory, Jacqueline M.; Jeong, Sooyeon; Breazeal, Cynthia L. (2013-12-09). "Robotic learning companions for early language development". Proceedings of the 15th ACM on International conference on multimodal interaction. New York, NY, USA: ACM. pp. 71–72. doi:10.1145/2522848.2531750. ISBN 978-1-4503-2129-7.
  28. ^ Gordon, Goren; Breazeal, Cynthia; Engel, Susan (2015-03-02). "Can Children Catch Curiosity from a Social Robot?". Proceedings of the Tenth Annual ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction. Portland Oregon USA: ACM: 91–98. doi:10.1145/2696454.2696469. ISBN 978-1-4503-2883-8.
  29. ^ Park, Hae Won; Rosenberg-Kima, Rinat; Rosenberg, Maor; Gordon, Goren; Breazeal, Cynthia (2017-03-06). "Growing Growth Mindset with a Social Robot Peer". Proceedings of the 2017 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction. Vienna Austria: ACM: 137–145. doi:10.1145/2909824.3020213. ISBN 978-1-4503-4336-7.
  30. ^ "Cynthia Breazeal – MIT RAISE: Responsible AI for Social Empowerment and Education". Retrieved 2025-03-14.
  31. ^ "Our Story". Day of AI. Retrieved 2025-03-14.
  32. ^ "Outreach – MIT RAISE: Responsible AI for Social Empowerment and Education". Retrieved 2025-03-14.
  33. ^ "MIT group releases white papers on governance of AI". MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 2023-12-11. Retrieved 2025-03-21.
  34. ^ Breazeal, Cynthia; Rai, Arun; Ramesh, Balasubramaniam; Chen, Liwei; Long, Yuan; Aria, Andrea; Loi, Hao; Torralba, Antonio; Bernstein, Jeremy; Reich, Justin; Klopfer, Eric; Abelson, Hal; Westerman, George; Bosch, Christina (2024-08-28). "Opportunities, Issues, and Challenges for Generative AI in Fostering Equitable Pathways in Computing Education". An MIT Exploration of Generative AI. doi:10.21428/e4baedd9.8c709c43.
  35. ^ "AI Policy Briefs". MIT Schwarzman College of Computing. Retrieved 2025-03-14.
  36. ^ "Cynthia Breazeal". scholar.google.com. Retrieved 2025-03-14.
  37. ^ "What is a good H-index for each academic position? - Academia Insider". 2023-09-19. Retrieved 2025-03-14.
  38. ^ Kim, Yubin; Xu, Xuhai; McDuff, Daniel; Breazeal, Cynthia; Park, Hae Won (2024-07-24). "Health-LLM: Large Language Models for Health Prediction via Wearable Sensor Data". Proceedings of the Fifth Conference on Health, Inference, and Learning. PMLR: 522–539. arXiv:2401.06866.
  39. ^ Williams, Randi; Park, Hae Won; Oh, Lauren; Breazeal, Cynthia (2019-07-17). "PopBots: Designing an Artificial Intelligence Curriculum for Early Childhood Education". Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence. 33 (1): 9729–9736. doi:10.1609/aaai.v33i01.33019729. ISSN 2374-3468.
  40. ^ Zhang, Helen; Lee, Irene; Ali, Safinah; DiPaola, Daniella; Cheng, Yihong; Breazeal, Cynthia (2023-06-01). "Integrating Ethics and Career Futures with Technical Learning to Promote AI Literacy for Middle School Students: An Exploratory Study". International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education. 33 (2): 290–324. doi:10.1007/s40593-022-00293-3. ISSN 1560-4306. PMC 9084886. PMID 35573722.
  41. ^ "‪Teaching and learning with children: Impact of reciprocal peer learning with a social robot on children's learning and emotive engagement‬". scholar.google.com. Retrieved 2025-03-29.
  42. ^ "‪A long-term study of young children's rapport, social emulation, and language learning with a peer-like robot playmate in preschool‬". scholar.google.com. Retrieved 2025-03-29.
  43. ^ "JIBO, World's First Family Robot. 4,800".
  44. ^ "2014 Boston Researcher Cynthia Breazeal is ready to bring robotics into the home". Recode. 12 December 2014.
  45. ^ "Jibo delayed to 2017 as social robot hits more hurdles". Slash Gear. 20 November 2016. Retrieved 26 February 2017.
  46. ^ "New Jibo ship date drops social robot into Alexa's new world". SlashGear. 2017-10-26. Retrieved 2018-03-04.
  47. ^ Ulanoff, Lance (2017-11-08). "Jibo is a cute home robot, but it's not as smart as Alexa". Mashable. Retrieved 2025-03-28.
  48. ^ "jibo the social robot returns, with its brand new website". NTT Disrupption. 2020-07-23. Archived from the original on 2020-08-05. Retrieved 2020-07-23.
  49. ^ "Contrary to popular opinion, Spielberg found the perfect ending for A.I." The A.V. Club. 16 April 2015.
  50. ^ Schmickle, Sharon (2008-05-23). "'Star Wars' exhibit comes to Science Museum, but is it science?". MinnPost. Retrieved 2025-03-28.
  51. ^ "2003 Young Innovators Under 35". Technology Review. 2003. Retrieved August 16, 2011.
  52. ^ Mack, Ann M. (2003-10-23). "R/GA's Greenberg Wins National Design Award". Retrieved 2025-03-28.
  53. ^ "Cynthia Breazeal Biography".
  54. ^ Staff, Entrepreneur (2015-01-17). "6 Innovative Women to Watch in 2015". Entrepreneur. Retrieved 2018-11-17.
  55. ^ "JIBO - by Huge Design / Core77 Design Awards". Core77. Retrieved 2025-03-28.
  56. ^ "The 25 Best Inventions of 2017". Time. Retrieved 2018-10-13.
  57. ^ "Elected AAAI Fellows". AAAI. 2020. Retrieved December 23, 2019.
  58. ^ "New Website Offers Mit Resources for K-12 Students to Learn Artificial Intelligence". Retrieved 2020-05-02.
  59. ^ Breazeal, Cynthia. "Cynthia Breazeal named to 2023 Forbes 50 Over 50 list". MIT Media Lab. Retrieved 2025-03-28.
  60. ^ Shingu, Sayo (2024-09-25). "MassRobotics Announces Recipient of 2024 Robotics Medal Recognizing Accomplishments of Women in Robotics". MassRobotics. Retrieved 2025-03-28.

Further reading

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