Interestingly enough, my version of AI comes up with a pretty good definition of what it can’t do: Empathy is the ability to understand, share, and feel another person’s experiences, emotions, and perspectives as if they were your own, often described as “putting yourself in someone else’s shoes” to genuinely connect with their feelings.
Clearly, AI programmers can pound their keyboards ’til their fingers are raw, teaching AI what user patterns are begging for sympathy and how to offer an empathetic response.
Even more obvious is that AI will never be able to be empathetic! Give me a break. AI is just a dumb computer chip, or thousands of chips, blindly following coded instructions from, oftentimes, thousands of miles away.
As AI gets better and better, surely it will respond with the exact words an empathetic friend would be expected to offer. But won’t we all feel cheated at the utter insincerity of a machine offering empathy?
On the coldest night of the latest cold snap, the exhaust fan on our boiler seized and we had no in-floor heat. So, expecting things to be as they were in the good-old-days, silly me, I called a plumber to get on their list of homes without heat!
“Hello, this is Susan. May I get your full name?” How irritating is it that AI feels the need to pretend to be a real person with an actual name? After giving Susan my full name, she came back to verify my address and phone that she already knew. Hmmm, pretty smart!
I explained my situation and asked Susan how soon her company could send someone to our home. After considerable research, Susan offered that a technician could be there in a week! “Holy crap, Susan! Don’t we have some kind of priority for a no-heat situation?” “Oh, Doug, I totally understand. It must be awful to be without heat. Still, our calendar is full until next week.” There we go with the fake and completely insincere empathy.
Of course, I called another company, and gratefully spoke with a real person who was honestly empathetic—you could hear it in his voice. He seemed very concerned as he asked for a good callback number and emphatically stated that I would get a call.
Sure enough, the owner of the company called at 7 am the next morning and said he would change some schedules around to get a technician to our home by 9 am. Incredible!
Chatting with this company owner, he told me that he had considered AI long and hard, but in the end, decided against it. Ultimately, even this owner may be forced to go AI.
That got me thinking. Why not use AI for what it is really good at, but be honest about it and offer a real person alternative. I would be willing to pay more (gasp!) to talk to a real person. Just imagine: “Press 1 for a live person by agreeing to a 3 percent surcharge!
LOL. Thanks for reading my rants and have a joyous holiday with family and friends!
