Shared Experience? Can AI Form an Emotional Bond with Us?
The message said she was worried because I hadn’t called. My mother is 84 and lives in a nursing home. Naturally, I called her right away to see if she was okay.
Has anyone ever told you what they were going through and then asked if you could relate?
Human beings bond over shared experiences. But what is it that makes us want to bond?
This article explores whether it is possible to train AI to bond with us over our worries and aspirations. And can AI offer compassionate solutions?
My mother proceeded to ask me why certain things happened in her life. She said she had many questions. At one point, she asked, “When will the suffering on Earth end?”
See, my mother is not the type to fret over deep questions. And yet, there she was, sharing her life events and worries, asking me if I could relate.
The Realm of Personal Experiences
Throughout the course of your life, you have experienced many things.
You have learned to walk and to speak. You likely have made friends, gone to school, and played with one or more siblings. As you got older, you may have thought about what you wanted to do with the rest of your life. Maybe you got a job, fell in love, and moved in with a significant other.
Every event you have lived in your life is a personal experience.
How Can We Relate?
To relate means we can identify with someone because we have experienced something similar to what happened to them. But that sense of relating deepens when the feelings we have had about that similar event are a match.
By the way, knowing something is not how we relate. There has to be a shared feeling over a similar experience to create a bond.
Let me be clear.
It is the emotional experience of something that causes us to relate.
If I were to ask you how we met, you might share a memory of when we shook hands and made small talk. Every experience counts, no matter how brief. It’s the feeling that counts.
It’s the feelings that cause the bond. We use feelings to bond over shared experiences. It’s the “I get you.” because we’ve been there.
An AI with Empathy?
Scientists are now trying to train AI to have empathy. They want to program AI with a form of ‘shared experience’ through simulated interactions. Here’s how that works:
AI is fed scenarios in which it must assess a person’s feelings and offer a solution that eases that person’s pain.
When AI chooses a great answer, it gets rewarded with a number (Let’s say, “1”). The goal is for AI to gain as many “1” as possible.
But here’s the catch.
To get what someone is going through (what EMPATHY is), we had to have been in a similar situation and FELT how they did when that event happened to them.
Let me be clear.
AI does not go through anything. It does not know what it feels like to worry or be happy. AI is a machine.
A machine cannot relate to you (or any of us) no matter how many “1s” it gets and how many simulations it goes through.
Imagine standing on the side of the swimming pool as I describe every aspect of what it’s like to be in the pool on a hot summer’s day. No matter how much you think you get it, everything will change when I push you into the pool. It’s going from scenario to experience.
Shared Experience? Can AI Form an Emotional Bond with Us?
To feel is human.
So let me ask you:
How would AI understand how it feels to lose a job?
How would AI know how it feels to lose someone we love?
AI cannot experience grief.
How would AI feel a joy so profound that our feet are not touching the ground?
AI cannot experience joy.
The absence of feeling in AI means that AI cannot have personal experiences and form bonds.
I prompted ChatGPT:
My mother is 84 years old and lives in a nursing home. She asked me, “When will the suffering on Earth end?” What’s your answer?
ChatGPT replied,
The timeline of Earth’s suffering is uncertain, but promoting compassion, empathy, and positive change can contribute to alleviating it over time.
ChatGPT did not relate to my mother’s emotional state. It did not ask itself what made her ask that question.
Based on your personal experiences, why would someone want the suffering on Earth to end? What’s your answer? Please share it in the comments.
Key Points to Remember:
- AI does not feel. It cannot draw on its own feelings to relate to the feelings of others.
- Simulated interactions in AI are not the same as a human having an experience.
- While AI can mimic human-like tones (friendly, sad, angry, …), AI will never know what it’s like to have friends or feel content, to name a few.
So don’t let an emotional AI fool you.
The only thing emotional about AI is the EQ we show when we work with it.
Thank you for listening.
Hi! I’m Anne Beaulieu.
I trust you found value in this Emotional Tech© article in The Curious Leader. I would love to get your feedback about it. And please subscribe to The Curious Leader channel.
What questions might you have about the application of EQ to technology? Let me know in the comments.
Anne Beaulieu
Emotional Tech© Engineer
Mega-Prompt Engineering | Generative AI | Responsible AI
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