“In the past year, have you found yourself under stress? Have you ever wished for help coping? Imagine if, throughout the pandemic, you’d had a virtual therapist powered by an artificial intelligence (AI) system, an entity that empathized with you and gradually got to know your moods and behaviors. Therapy is just one area where we think an AI system that can recognize and interpret emotions could offer great benefits to people,” reports IEEE Spectrum.

A team from Microsoft’s Human Understanding and Empathy group is working to incorporate emotional intelligence into Artificial Intelligence software. Why? With emotional intelligence, our future robot overlords will be better able to tell when a human is on the verge of physical collapse, or may be preparing to attack his robot keepers. “The effort to produce emotionally intelligent AI builds on work in psychology, neuroscience, human-computer interaction, linguistics, electrical engineering, and machine learning.”

“[Affective computing] refers to technology that can sense, understand, and even simulate human emotions. [Robots] that feature emotional intelligence should be more natural and efficient than those that do not.Consider how such an AI agent could help a person who’s feeling overwhelmed by stress. Currently, the best option might be to see a real human psychologist who, over a series of costly consultations, would discuss the situation and teach relevant stress-management skills. During the sessions, the therapist would continually evaluate the person’s responses and use that information to shape what’s discussed, adapting both content and presentation in an effort to ensure the best outcome.

While this treatment is arguably the best existing therapy, and while technology is still far from being able to replicate that experience, it’s not ideal for some. For example, certain people feel uncomfortable discussing their feelings with therapists, and some find the process stigmatizing or time-consuming. An AI therapist could provide them with an alternative avenue for support, while also conducting more frequent and personalized assessments. One recent review article found that 1 billion people globally are affected by mental and addictive disorders; a scalable solution such as a virtual counselor could be a huge boon.”