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AI will never convey the essence of human empathy

Nature Human Behaviour volume 7, pages 1808–1809 (2023)Cite this article

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An online emotional-support chat service recently tested a feature that enabled human responders to use GPT-3 in crafting responses. Initial evaluations showed that these AI-assisted responses were perceived as more emotionally supportive than human-only responses. Yet, this advantage was lost once users learned of the AI involvement, which prompted the company to withdraw the feature. This mirrors another recent incident in which a university faced backlash for using an AI chatbot to compose a comforting email to students after a mass shooting.

One widely accepted conceptualization of empathy involves three main components1: (1) cognitive empathy (the recognition and understanding of the emotional states of others); (2) emotional empathy (also known as experience sharing), which entails sharing the emotions of others while maintaining a distinction between self and other; and (3) motivational empathy (also known as empathic care), which manifests as feelings of concern for the other and a willingness to put effort into improving their well-being. The last highlights the fact that while we may possess the ability to empathize, we do not always do so2. As the act of empathizing may be costly, we do not empathize with everyone but rather choose who to empathize with, and —when stripped from context and motivation — empathy is often avoided2,3,4.

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  1. Psychology Department, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel

    Anat Perry

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  1. Anat Perry
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Correspondence to Anat Perry.

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Nature Human Behaviour thanks Carlos Montemayor and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Perry, A. AI will never convey the essence of human empathy. Nat Hum Behav 7, 1808–1809 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-023-01675-w

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