The Future of Feeling: Building Empathy in a Tech-Obsessed World

by Kaitlin Ugolik Phillips

Bigger names in tech have taken up similar work. Google Glass launched a prototype software to help children with autism learn social skills and practice conversations. In 2017, a study published in the journal Frontiers in Robotics and AI found that it worked pretty well—it recognized conversational prompts from the children and responded in a convincing way, so most kids were comfortable enough talking to it that they saw some improvement. Software that talks back might seem counterintuitive, but as I’ve learned, AI systems are quickly becoming normal parts of our everyday life, and they increasingly are being given not only intelligence but personality. Neuroscience and philosophy researchers at the University of Freiburg, in Germany, came together to study the use of socially assistive robots and found that as the population expands and people live longer, the demand for humanlike robot assistance will continue to grow. Some researchers have worried that we already expect too much from these bots: technical flawlessness, personality, adaptation to environments, behavioral changes based on our needs, and, in the medical context as well as others, empathy.