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Why Do Can We Care?
Empathy can be described as the process of perceiving other people’s feelings regardless of our own circumstances and lived experiences. In short, it’s the ability to put ourselves in other people’s shoes – to understand why something might bring them happiness, sorrow, or rage, without necessarily having to go through that something ourselves. Neuroscience tells us the mechanisms that elicit empathy invove hared representations in the anterior insula and anterior/mid-cingulate cortex activated both during one’s own and another’s pain. These systems are modulated both by traits like alexithymia and contextual factors alike (e.g., fairness, group membership).
Are We The Only Empaths Around?
Frans de Waal and other researchers argue that empathy is not a uniquely human trait, but rather a part of a broader biological mechanism that goes across species. A study by Dale J. Langford and colleagues shows that mice display empathetic behavior toward their cage mates but not towards unfamiliar mice, which challenges the idea that these reactions in animals with simple cognition are just automatic protection responses. As in, that their empathy is only sparked by fear.
One could argue that animals are still living creatures. The discussion, though, is not about whether artificial intelligence can feel empathy - but rather, if it can be perceived as emphatetic thorugh its behavior. While robots do not feel emotions, in fact, they can notoriously be programmed to display responses that align with societal norms, such as using comforting tones, adjusting proximity, or mirroring facial expressions. A notorious example of a robot displaying social intelligence is Kismet, an MIT student project that showcases how the act of mimicking expressions and interpreting tones can elicit the impression of said creature being emphatetic towards humans.
Theia And Struggle
My goal is to present a setting believable enough for the observer to perceive an artificial creature as empathetic through its interaction with another - like a recreation of Langford's mice experiment of sorts. In this context, Theia (from Greek ἐμπάθεια, the etymological root of the word empathy) will respond to an input when interacting with Struggle, a similarly-built creature that will be, true to its name, struggling with performing a certain task (it could be moving, walking without tripping into obstacles, etc.).
The idea is that seeing Theia stop and help Struggle will elicit a sense of "second-hand empathy" in the observer: not because they will want to run in Struggle's aid themselves (though they might), but because they will witness another creature do that.
It's important to note that not helping Struggle would not, in fact, prevent Theia from achieving its own task in this scenario. The main reason for this lies in the willingness to depict Theia's intervention as a selfless, empathy-rooted act, rather than just another step the creature must follow as per programming to achieve its goal, which is crucial in the hope of eliciting perceived empathy. For instance: the task is to walk in a straight line for two meters, but Struggle gets stuck in a laying object on the ground. Despite having a clear path, Theia stops in its tracks and pushes the obstacle out of the way so that Struggle is free to resume its route.
References
de Waal, F. B. M. (2007). Do Animals Feel Empathy? Scientific American Mind, 18(6), 28–35. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24939761
Edgar, J. L., Nicol, C. J., Clark, C. C. A., & Paul, E. S. (2012). Measuring empathic responses in animals. Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 138(3-4), 182–193. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.applanim.2012.02.006
Leite, I., Pereira, A., Mascarenhas, S., Martinho, C., Prada, R., & Paiva, A. (2013). The influence of empathy in human–robot relations. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 71(3), 250–260. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhcs.2012.09.005
Riess H. (2017). The Science of Empathy. Journal of patient experience, 4(2), 74–77. https://doi.org/10.1177/2374373517699267
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