Emotion AI is a subset of artificial intelligence (the broad term for machines replicating the way humans think) that measures, understands, simulates, and reacts to human emotions. It’s also known as affective computing, or artificial emotional intelligence. The field dates back to at least 1995, when MIT Media lab professor Rosalind Picard published “Affective Computing.” AI and neuroscience researchers agree that current forms of AI cannot have their own emotions, but they can mimic emotion, such as empathy. Synthetic speech also helps reduce the robotic like tone many of these services operate with and emit more realistic emotion.
Can a machine display empathy?
Because empathy can be learned, artificial Intelligence can surely be equipped with artificial empathy in the years to come. Up until recently, AI researchers have focused on identifying emotions. A new study from Columbia Engineering, published Monday in Nature Scientific Reports, shows how one robot has learned to predict its partner robot's future actions based on just a few video frames. "Our findings begin to demonstrate how robots can see the world from another robot's perspective," lead study author Boyuan Chen said in a statement. The researchers placed one robot in a playpen roughly 3x2 feet in size. The researchers programmed the robot to find and move toward any green circle in its view. Sometimes the robot would see a green circle in its camera view and move directly toward it. Other times, the green circle would be blocked from view by a tall red box, so the robot would move toward a different green circle or not move at all. After observing the other robot move around for two hours, the observing robot could anticipate the other robot's path. The observing robot was eventually able to predict the other robot's path 98 out of 100 times, in varying situations.
The full definition of empathy in the Oxford English Dictionary is this: “the power of mentally identifying oneself with (and so fully comprehending) a person or object of contemplation.” Machines cannot mentally identify themselves with human beings because what goes on in the mind of a human being involves things that a machine can never experience for itself, no matter how advanced and deep-learning-driven its own processes might be. For the same reason, a machine will never fully comprehend a human being. As we discuss the role of AI in society in general, and in marketing in particular, it’s important to be clear about why this is. Human consciousness involves a lot, lot more than rational cognition. In fact, that ability for rational thought is a byproduct of most of the other aspects of our consciousness – not our brain’s driving force. Our conscious life is driven by the way that we experience the world through our senses: a combination of sight, sound, touch, taste and smell that no machine will ever experience in the same way. Therefore, AI cannot make another person feel understood and cared for.