Outsourcing Empathy To AI
「 In the ideal world of engineered empathy」
People writing comments with an AI recently caught my attention. I saw them in some of my posts but also in others too. Like, how socially inept have we become that we need AI to weave words just to relate to others?
Perhaps, we’re not socially inept and there can be a million reasons why. But it's a sad reality that some of us would have used AI to think for them and to interact. Maybe soon, this will be the norm and I can understand why this can be helpful for a certain set of people.
I have never been diagnosed or even got myself properly checked. But, based on my entire life’s experience with relating to others and pertaining to empathy, I am probably on the lower end. I could never know what to say when someone is experiencing pain, death, or all types of emotions. I could not sympathize if they are going through problems in life. I tend to scramble to find words and I am not expressive at all. All I know is that, if they have a problem, how can I help fix it? Except with death, I can’t fix that one.
Do I expect people to do the same? honestly no. In fact, sometimes I find it strange when people show some empathy and care. It's probably why those who really show me empathy and care that beyond superficial relationship, really changed my life and restores a little bit of my faith in humanity.
That being said, if a person like me whose default is just that we don't know how to feel empathy, wants to say things to be more empathetic, AI can give us some lists on what to say. They don’t have emotion per se but they have strings of words, that when we send it to someone going through something just so they could feel like “ oh that person gets me” or some other variations.
In an ideal world, AI would have fixed my social ineptitude. It could help me relate more to a lot of people and even fixed relationships that I failed to maintain. AI would know just the right words to say to the other person without the chance of me offending them or burning the bridges. I can train AI to give me some lists of what to say though it’s superficial but to someone like me, that’s a means of survival, a way to blend in into some groups or the world.
With AI, it would be a faster way to appear to be more social and be able to relate to others. But, just as anything in life, I tend to take the difficult approach to fix my social glitches.
I know that there are sayings to keep a few close friends than shallow ones but it would be nicer to actually appear more friendly or be more approachable than distant. At least, this is one of my goal I discovered this year.
Maintaining any kind of relationship can be quite a challenge for me as well. There are layers to relationships such as communications, consistency, reciprocity and even effort. In an ideal world, AI could help with real-time feedback. It’s like having a personal coach to tell you about things. It might sound superficial but in an ideal world, this is what a person like me needs.
In my most ideal world, AI would help me keep track of my friends, connections, or my entire network on a spreadsheet style just how I manage and keep track of things. It probably sounds too much but that's what a person like me needs.
But I didn’t rely on AI which is probably why I still suck at it despite reading a lot of books on how to make friends. And at least, I’ve finally got some awareness which is a good starting point 😀
I am often on the same side as you, not knowing how to express empathy, sympathy, or needing to endlessly clarify my intent with others - to assure them that I don't have any ulterior motives, or to constantly clarify my own meaning or intent in responding to their suffering.
I am learning to listen better. That means not saying anything, and asking if the person wants a solution (what I would do) - or comfort (what can I do for them?).
I think that it would be insincere to use AI as a crutch on this, but it may well help us identify patterns or flaws in our behaviour, I am still learning about my own patterns, and the only way I do, is by having people I trust tell me about them.
To put a layer of abstraction or a "mask", if you will, of AI between me and a situation weakens me as a human - as the faults in our character and behaviour are what make us human.
There's also something here about the Turing test. I think that if I am interacting with someone who is using AI to do these things, then I'm the one failing - as opposed to the machine convincing me that they're human.
That's basically it and I just found out these days there are many AI videos that could pass as a reality. Even my own mom was falling to notice that it was AI.
It's definitely insincere to use AI & this is also why it's taking me a couple of days just to get back here haha. I am sure with AI, my reply would've been faster.
But hey, I appreciate the sincerity.
Okay, but how do you feel about receiving comments with machine generated empathy? You're able to spot them, so you know it's only a pattern of words not a sentiment by a person. Is the semblance of empathy enough, does it do the job?
Sometimes I can spot AI comments, they're usually a bit sideways to the post or seem to summarise what's said, but often I don't think I can, except to think to myself, it seems a bit odd this person is responding to me, what's attracted them to do that? Then the quandary of responding: it might be a real person, a newbie to Hive, and I'm ignoring them or it might be AI and no-one cares if I respond or not and I'm taking ages writing a reply to them 😂
I definitely notice AI generated empathy. It's sooo rigid and I don't know as if we're literally talking to Chatgpt except they're actual human behind the screen. So, nowadays I guess I'd be okay if someone said " Thank you" more than a wordy AI generated comment that won't take them more than a couple of seconds to ctlr+c ctlr+v haha. And this comment takes me 3 days xD to actually get back to.
😂
I don't think they're doing it to socialize, I think it's just another form of reward farming.
That's another layer to that as well where they use AI just to get an easy vote :D and make them look like they read the whole thing.
When I was still a young man, and I was attempting to figure out how to make girls like me back, I would sometimes buy those greeting cards. There was this store, not too far from my house that sold them.
The owner of this little store was friends with my grandma, so she was always helpful when I was on my mission. Showing me the new ones, the more cutesy ones, and what not.
Since I was courting girls (i was 13,14) it was a cheat code of sorts. A cute little animal, a short poem, etc. The process made sense to me back then, because I was still rather inept about it all.
As I got older, I understood or at least I think I did, the silliness of the act. Me, walking into a store, looking at cards someone else wrote, finding one that feels "good" and then signing my name on it. "yeah, that sounds like something i would have liked to come up with"
As you can imagine, I stopped buying the things. I began writing poetry, songs, letters, etc. Otherwise, it felt like I was selling smoke. "this is who I am!" didn't mean crap. I was simply saying "hey, i spend money on you".
Where am I going with this?
Well, this whole AI to help people connect with other people feels somewhat similar to me. But listen, I get the difficulty some people have to connect with others. Its not that rare to be honest. More so because we live in an online existence, and in this online existence connections are conveniently disposable.
But in an already connected, yet disconnected world, we are in danger of exacerbating the contradictiveness of the picture even more. I say its ok to be flawed, to be a little inept expressing one's emotions. I let a wart survive my combing of my writing. Its a way to keep it honest, keep it human.
If you and I ever meet in real life, I won't be a surprise to you. Its just be me with sounds, instead of letters in a screen. That, to me at least, is worth the effort.
Now, do I judge people who are using AI harshly? No, not really. I know why this is happening, I'm not blind to the realities that are pushing us into that direction. But I also think that for the sake of ourselves, we ought to fight back, even if its just a little bit.
We're being pushed into that direction for sure although sometimes, I still think human could fight back because as the moment we speak, AI doesn't have its own consciousness therefore critical thinking and our emotion remains to be our strenght. Oh and imperfection just once again is another character of human and in the age of AI, that needs to be emphasizes too.
I see it the same as people that generate AI images. I just don't like it. There are things AI is good for and the future is looking good with some of it. But this social side is just depressing. AI image generation for posts, comments, etc etc. I just don't like it. Especially when it's something related to entertainment. Not touching a game, tv show, or film that has AI generated imagery or sound.
I would agree for AI to be used in engineering or medical fields but just as you said, once it's used in social settings, that changed the whole conversation. I don't think the emotion is there anymore.
All it tells me in the end is that someone has nothing to really say. They can't imagine, they can't think. Even with things like games: AI art? All it says is you're lazy and unimaginative. What makes you think I want to engage with someone's "creation" that ultimately has no personality or idea to it?
Your not alone Mac!
I was not also good in showing empathy verbally and I find it cringe when someone do that to me.
Though deep inside, I felt that emotions, just I couldn't create the exact phrases to say.
Even this past week, my friend for decade, told me that her and partner for 9 years broke up (3rd party)
I know she's hurt but what to say 😭😭.?
At the end, told her to file a leave if she can and stay with me here at home for a while.
Me too! I felt that emotions but I am not quite expressive to verbalize them. And your approach is something I would have done as well as a friend rather than leaving a lot of words or even not saying things at all.
I really appreciate everything you've written here and the empathy you have, because sometimes I think the same thing, that AI might help us with relationships we want to maintain or something like that. I think what's holding me back from going down that path, like commenting with AI (with the goal of getting more involved) is that I imagine I'd still be a completely different person irl, like the way I communicate etc
AI is a complicated subject here at Hive. I can tell you that my experience is that I introduced Hive to a few people on a call with a friend, and the moment we commented on the resistance to posting articles generated solely by AI, there was general discontent.
Imagine being on a call with about 6 people, probable onboards for Hive, and everyone simply looking sad when we said "you can't ask the AI to generate an entire article and post it", well, that's another big challenge for bringing in new people.
Without the use of AI it's going to be a lot harder for people to come here... they'll make a few posts and after they see how much work it is to write everything from scratch and post it... more ghost profiles will appear... at least that's my opinion.
Yep! It's the challenge these days. I mean we write to socialize here I think or just simply a personal blogs/sharing our passion. I think that aspect of actual "community" is something that I feel missing lately but maybe it's just me. In the past, we check each other through our blogs and stories. These days, whenever I go around it just feels like content generated with machine, pretty soulless.
I don't do that for Hive because I don't think it's allowed, but I do use AI to help draft emails be in for personal capacity or for work purposes. Sometimes they can string sentences better and are more skilful in adjusting the tone of the email, e.g. more formal or more friendly.