Artificial and emotional intelligence?

The executive coach Marshall Goldsmith has used AI to create his avatar, a virtual version of himself that shares knowledge gleaned from his brilliant career. In other words, Goldsmith has widened his reach to as broad an audience as possible. But what is the extent of this avatar’s emotional intelligence?

We still have a long way to go before AI is equipped with emotional intelligence, quite simply because it only has the ability to simulate emotions rather than feel them. At the same time, AI is expert in two of the three forms of empathy:

Cognitive empathy: AI understands how a person sees the world.

Emotional empathy: AI can perform a detailed analysis of emotional cues such as facial expressions or tone of voice.

By contrast, empathic concern poses a problem: it isn’t at all sure that AI can show this type of concern and have a kind of “presence” for the person it is talking to. That all depends on how the AI is programmed.

What’s more, we’re all now aware that we need to watch out for AI “hallucinations” or unadulterated erroneous responses. So, who would be courageous enough to trust the technology entirely? A study by Krysta Software* has shown that fewer than one American in two would grant AI the power take a decision where the outcome would affect them. In AI… we don’t yet trust!

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