This Makes Me Angry: Missed Opportunities in Behavioral AI

In this powerful and deeply human session from the Artificial Unintelligence Conference 2025, Rogayeh Tabrizi (CEO, Theory+Practice) channels her frustration into insight, exploring how the AI industry has lost sight of what truly matters — understanding people.

Rogayeh argues that most AI systems are designed to optimize behavior rather than understand it. In chasing efficiency, clicks, and conversions, the field of Behavioral AI has overlooked its most important goal: building technologies that reflect human context, emotion, and intent. Through candid reflection and real-world examples, she reframes anger as a force for progress — a call to re-center empathy, diversity, and psychological depth in how AI is built and used.

Key themes include:

Why Behavioral AI has prioritized optimization over understanding

The hidden cost of removing context and emotion from data

How bias and misinterpretation distort human behavior in AI systems

The need for interdisciplinary approaches — psychology, anthropology, and ethics

How anger can become a catalyst for innovation and accountability