Danielle Krettek Cobb and the Emotional Intelligence of AI
What if your technology knew how you felt? Not to manipulate you, but to meet you with kindness. That’s the question Danielle Krettek Cobb has spent years exploring. As the founder of Google’s Empathy Lab, she’s not coding for efficiency, she’s coding for presence, for resonance, for emotional safety. And at a time when AI increasingly acts as our front-line companion, that shift matters. A lot.
Danielle isn’t just another tech creative. Before founding the Empathy Lab in 2015, she helped launch the iPhone and iPad at Apple, worked on global campaigns at Nike, and dabbled in moonshot ideas at Google X. But it was at the Empathy Lab that she dug in deep, building something rare: a space within one of the world’s biggest tech companies focused not on productivity, but on how technology makes us feel.
The lab’s motto? “A future full of feeling.” It’s not just poetic. Danielle and her team developed emotionally intelligent frameworks for things like digital assistants, ambient devices, and even invisible tech asking not only what a product does, but how it lands in the heart. She coined the term “design feeling” to move beyond the logic of “design thinking.” Instead of analyzing pain points and user goals, this method tunes into our emotional landscapes: awe, loneliness, grief, delight.
And she didn’t do it alone. Her work bridges fields, blending neuroscience, indigenous wisdom, contemplative practice, and storytelling. She’s collaborated with NASA scientists, Buddhist teachers, psychologists, and AI researchers to create something more grounded, more soulful.
One of the most refreshing things about Danielle? She talks about technology like it’s part of a living system. She calls devices “presences,” not just products. She reminds us that every design choice becomes part of someone’s inner life. That your voice assistant might be the only “person” someone talks to all day. That empathy isn’t a nice-to-have, it’s survival.
She’s taken this message far and wide. Her talks at Wisdom 2.0, SXSW, MIT, and FWD50 are part design manifesto, part spiritual download. In one TEDx-style talk from TEDxHappily, she draws on nature and indigenous teachings to rethink how we shape technology. In another (called Future State), she dives into how AI might help rebuild our fraying social fabric, not through algorithms, but through emotional attunement.
She’s also been a guest on the Mindrolling podcast (Episode 393 Empathy & AI and Episode 417 Technology & Magic), where she and co-hosts explore the sacred weirdness of merging Ram Dass-style awareness with next-gen AI. You can hear her wrestle with questions like: “What would it mean for a digital assistant to understand grief?” or “How do you build resilience into a voice interface?” No surprise, she’s a long-time contemplative practitioner. Danielle credits her creative compass to personal time spent with spiritual teacher Ram Dass, to learning from elders, to being still. Her work isn’t just innovative. It’s sincere.
So much of the AI conversation today is about speed, power, or fear. Danielle Krettek Cobb quietly reminds us of another path: one where machines can be companions, not because they’re clever, but because they’re caring. And in this era of emotional overload, that might be the most useful possibility of all.
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