How would you feel about getting therapy from a robot? Emotionally intelligent machines may not be as far away as it seems. Over the last few decades, artificial intelligence (AI) have got increasingly good at reading emotional reactions in humans.
But reading is not the same as understanding. If AI cannot experience emotions themselves, can they ever truly understand us? And, if not, is there a risk that we ascribe robots properties they don’t have?
The latest generation of AIs have come about thanks to an increase in data available for computers to learn from, as well as their improved processing power.