Ex Machina: Empathy

Meet Rose, a cheeky concierge for The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas. She’ll recommend restaurants, arrange for pillows to be delivered to your room, flirt with you, and even play games like Would You Rather. But you can’t thank her for the great service: She’s a robot.

According to a recent piece published in Advertising Age, Rose isn’t alone. Businesses of all kinds are increasingly using similar chatbots to connect with customers and lift sales. These efforts are part of an ongoing quest to develop ever-more humanlike AI, with scientists refining machine-learning algorithms to create robots that recognize emotions, display empathy, and communicate in a socially natural manner.

THE PRESENT: EMOTIONALLY INTELLIGENT MACHINES

An increasing number of AI companies are developing robots that possess emotional intelligence—that is, the ability to detect and react to social signals. (See: “The Age of Artificial Intelligence.”) This is possible in part thanks to hardware improvements: Sensors like Microsoft Kinect allow robots to track a variety of emotional cues, such as facial expressions, words used, tone of voice, and body language. Improved Big Data capabilities and machine learning (including so-called “neural network” software) then enable these robots to analyze massive amounts of human interaction and discern behavioral patterns.

For some robots, it stops there. What the robot learns is…