Artificial empathy

Artificial empathy or computational empathy is the development of AI systems—such as companion robots or virtual agents—that can detect emotions and respond to them in an empathic way.^[1]

Although such technology can be perceived as scary or threatening,^[2] it could also have a significant advantage over humans for roles in which emotional expression can be important, such as in the health care sector.^[3] For example, care-givers who perform emotional labor above and beyond the requirements of paid labor can experience chronic stress or burnout, and can become desensitized to patients.

Emotional role-playing between a care-receiver and a robot might actually result in less fear and concern for the receiver's predicament ("if it is just a robot taking care of me it cannot be that critical")^{[according to whom?]}. Scholars debate the possible outcome of such technology using two different perspectives: Either the artificial empathy could help the socialization of care-givers, or serve as role model for emotional detachment.^[3][4]

A broader definition of artificial empathy is "the ability of nonhuman models to predict a person's internal state (e.g., cognitive, affective, physical) given the signals (s)he emits (e.g., facial expression, voice, gesture) or to predict a person's reaction (including, but not limited to internal states) when he or she is exposed to a given set of stimuli (e.g., facial expression, voice, gesture, graphics, music, etc.)".^[5]