A recent NPR episode discussed the use of sophisticated AI chatbots in customer service. Will an AI chatbot be able to recognize when to soothe an irate customer? Can it learn to type or say “I understand you are frustrated” to de-escalate the situation?
With the huge advances in AI these days, I don’t doubt that AI can learn to do these things. But how will we feel when we hear/read these messages? Although AI will learn to communicate caring, will we feel cared for when we receive those messages? I am not so sure.
I have two opposite experiences that make me wonder about this. The first experience was one that happened during the pandemic. I got an unaddressed card in my physical mailbox that said “we can make it!” and signed with some nick-name I didn’t recognize. I believe this was a well-meaning gesture by an unknown neighbor, who was trying to spread good energy. But it had the opposite effect for. I really got very annoyed instead. I thought: “You don’t know who the hell I am, and I don’t know who you are – so why are you trying to say you care!” This experience makes me think I would react to a chatbot the same way. I don’t think a chatbot could make me feel more anger or annoyed instead of calm me down.
However, a second experience makes me think maybe I could be calmed by AI. About a week or so ago I was waiting for the signal to walk across the street, when a little food-delivery robot wheeled up next to me. When the cross light came on, the robot didn’t move. And I felt the urge to say “come on little robot, it’s safe. Here, cross with me.” I noticed how easy it was to think of this little box as a child I wanted to protect. So maybe if a cute little robot tells me it cares, I will believe it.
Here’s a quote from MIT psychologist Sherry Turkle, that I feel sums up my feelings about this topic.
“The performance of empathy is not empathy,” [Turkle] said. “The area of companion, lover, therapist, best friend is really one of the few areas where people need people.”
How do you think you’ll feel when AI tells you it cares? Will you feel cared for?
Since I originally published this post on April 28 [2023], I have seen articles about this topic. I add them here to keep a record:
From Nature News, on May 4, 2023, “Is the world ready for ChatGPT therapists.”
From NYT, May 3, 2023, “My weekend with an emotional support A.I. companion.”
Socially-Embedded learning 
This is an interesting post, Dr. Streveler. It has been well documented that text based conversation has limitations in conveying emotions because of the lack of “features” such as intonation, body language and verbal cues. I remembered getting in similar situations like in your first example. I am skeptical if AI can solve this inherent weakness in text based communication. Maybe if the AI have more features like avatars and text to speech it might help in conveying emotion, but it will not entirely solve the problem.
Alfa, You are very correct that we will develop better and better ways for AI to convey emotion. However, I tend to agree with Sherry Turkle who said “The performance of empathy is not empathy.” I know we’ll get AI to “perform” empathy – but how will be perceive that performance?”