The Affects of Emotional AI

When interacting with machines, concerns tend to focus on effectiveness. People want a reminder or suggestion and would like to have it provided efficiently. However, the other side of the dream would be machines responding to people in a more sensitive way, such as an AI that when a person is anxious calms them, praises when they achieve something, or for that matter, recognizes the realist of a person even when it not conscious on their part. The more complexity to this vision is the AI, would have the capacity to empathize with the person or it would be an imitation of that?

AI Ability

Understanding the modern AI, it is able to interpret and distinguish emotions through tone of voice, facial expression, or even the sentiment of a text. For example:

• AI in customer service is able to identify the aggravation in a caller and as a result, the AI routes the call to a person.
• There are chatbots who identify themselves as a therapist who, to some degree, pulls themselves out of their struggles to be able to offer consolation.
• Companionship AI’s are able to mimic the tone that a person would use to speak to them.

AI’s that possess such capabilities are, in a sense, able to exhibit such human abilities. However, they are an AI pattern in the sense that there is no actual emotion from the AI.

The Difference between Mimicry and Empathy

When it comes head to another being, the empathic ability in people is what attachment and emotional bonding is felt.

Machines do not have feelings other than simulating them. With that being said, there is no emotional connection to “I’m sorry you are going through this,” other than a robotic response to something caring.

The deeper question is: does the difference matter? If a person feels comforted and supported or less alone because of AI, is there no empathy being applied?

Humans face certain risks when adopting the belief in the illusion.

• In many aspects, emotionally intelligent AI is beneficial, such as in mental health, caring for the elderly, or in education, but the risks are worrisome:
• Emotional dependency: AI “friends” are unable to reciprocate, which leaves users in emotional bonds that are unbalanced.
• Exploitation: Biased decisions made by users are disguised as manipulation, which an AI utilized shopping assistant could do to users.
• Encapsulation: Users may replace actual reality with a simulated depiction.

It is like seeing an actor crying on stage. While their display may evoke an emotional response, we all realize at the end of the day, there is no actual suffering. With AI, there is the potential to forget all of that, which isn’t a good thing.

Do AI have feelings is the question?

Some scientists argue that in the more advanced evolutionary stages of AI, empathy will be exhibited when the require sentience.

Emotions are indeed part of the human condition because they pertain to biology and life experience, and biological vulnerability is the linchpin of existence. At what level the technology is now, AI does not feel and only responds.

But here comes the twist; if to empathize is to empathize as to effect (how one feels after an action is done) and not as to cause (why an action is expressed), then perhaps AI does not need to feel to “be sufficiently empathetic.”

The Middle Ground: Augmented Empathy

• Perhaps the true potential of emotional AI is not to replace human empathy, but to augment it. For example:
• An educator using AI to understand particular concept students are struggling with.
• A physician with AI that knows the moment to intervene, and is able to detect, and mitigate, poor prognostic chances of anxiety that may not be apparent until much later.
• An isolated person able to connect with an AI does not dispense with the obligation to attempt to connect with others.
• AI is not overstepping boundaries; it is facilitating the appreciation and attainment of greater levels of empathic concern.

Final Thought

An example of emotional intelligent AI will never “feel empathy” as human beings do, and also, no matter how convincing it will likely be. But that does not mean it has no meaning. Emotional AI, if designed in intelligent ways, may serve also as a mirror, and a bridge, and a base that enables feeling of being cared for and listened to.

The answer is not in whether AI can feel. What may base our utopia is how we choose to apply the artificial phenomenon it emulates.

Will it help us strengthen connections with people, or replace them and leave us lonelier?