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What Is Required for Empathic AI? It Depends, and Why That Matters for AI Developers and Users

Year: 2024

Type: conference-paper

Abstract: Interest is growing in artificial empathy, but so is confusion about what artificial empathy is or needs to be. This confusion makes it challenging to navigate the technical and ethical issues that accompany empathic AI development. Here, we outline a framework for thinking about empathic AI based on the premise that different constellations of capabilities associated with empathy are important for different empathic AI applications. We describe distinctions of capabilities that we argue belong under the empathy umbrella, and show how three medical empathic AI use cases require different sets of these capabilities. We conclude by discussing why appreciation of the diverse capabilities under the empathy umbrella is important for both AI creators and users.

Source: Proceedings of the AAAI/ACM Conference on AI Ethics and Society

DOI: 10.1609/aies.v7i1.31725

Authors: Jana Schaich Borg, Hannah Read

Institution: Duke University

Language: English

Topic: Ethics and Social Impacts of AI

Subfield: Safety Research

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: bronze

OpenAlex ID: W4404518244

FWCI: 1.875

Cites:

Cited by: 4

Related to: 10