The Prospects of Artificial Empathy: A Question of Attitude?

Artificial empathy (AE) is a hotly contested topic. Recently, several empathy researchers have voiced criticism on the prospect of AE, arguing that it is impossible, unethical, or both. Contrary to these sentiments, we believe that further nuance and research are needed to better understand AE, its risks, and what it can potentially contribute to human well-being. We will focus on one obstacle to the success of AE: the human attitude toward artificial empathizers. In short, the obstacle is that humans will tend to discard the value of AE on the basis that it is generated by an AI. However, while it may be impossible to completely overcome this obstacle, we believe it remains an open but empirically testable question to what extent it can be alleviated. To this end, we hypothesize that AE, given the right conditions, can be a legitimate form of empathy which in turn may yield significant benefits to human welfare. Finally, we describe a planned empirical study that aims to further illuminate the attitudes-obstacle, and how it provides a challenge for the success of AE.