New research suggests AI tools can facilitate empathic language, but whether AI can improve perceived empathy remains uncertain.

AI systems can be trained to offer empathic language in real-time, based on entered text and offer collaborative feedback to users.
Users that experience more difficulty with offering empathic expressions will be most likely to benefit from such AI tools.
I introduce the term “end-to-end empathy” -- an empathic design concept that captures the importance that AI systems facilitate increased emotional awareness and processing of on both sides of an interaction in order to build a sense of connection.

Recent studies show that an AI system that offers empathic language can help people feel like they can engage more effectively in online text-based asynchronous peer-to-peer support conversations. Similar to Gmail's Smart Compose real-time assisted writing, the AI system in the study, called HAILEY (Human-AI coLlaboration approach for EmpathY) is an "AI-in-the-loop agent that provides people with just-in-time feedback" and gives people words to use to enhance empathy. This system is different from an AI-only based system that generates text responses from scratch without collaboration with a person.

The collaborative AI system offers real-time suggestions on how to express empathy in conversations based on words that the user provided. At that point, the user can accept or reject the suggestion or reword their response based on the AI feedback. This gives the user ultimate authorship over the final wording.

The goal is to augment the interaction through human-AI collaboration, rather than replace human interaction with AI-generated responses.

The study examined the impact of this AI system on an online support platform called TalkLife, where peers provide support for each other using asynchronous posts, not live chatting or text messaging conversations.

The research team found that a human-AI collaborative approach lead to a nearly 20% increase in feeling able to express empathy. This was measured by comparing self-ratings from peer support users who used the AI system provided self-ratings, compared to people who did not have access to the system. In particular, the AI system was helpful for people who said that they typically experience difficulty with providing support through empathic language. That group reported an even larger increase in feeling capable of expressing empathy (39% increase).

There are two elements that were not studied in this research that will be important for future adoption— specifically what I introduce as “end-to-end empathy,” or the ability for the AI system to facilitate both sender’s emotional processing and recipient’s sense of perceived empathy. I introduce this new term “end-to-end empathy” as an empathic design concept in order to capture the importance that building a sense of connection requires both senders and recipients to have increased emotional awareness and processing. Further research should compare how people perceive human-AI responses versus human-generated in order to determine whether this tool can increased end-to-end empathy.

First, in this study the messages generated with the help of AI were not rated by the recipient for empathy, or perceived empathy. Recipients should rate messages composed by human user alone should be directly compared with the human-AI collaborative messages, from the same user.

Second, the study did not assess how recipients of the message would feel if they knew that the message was not fully human-generated and included real-time feedback and suggestions from an AI system. It is possible that perceived empathy may be lower once the recipient realizes that a trained AI system helped generate the response. Similarly, if you knew that someone had bought a gift for you based on an AI system's feedback or suggestion, would this make a difference in how connected and understood you felt by the person? Or what if you found out that the person had bought a gift for you based on a targeted advertising promotion that had been suggested by an AI algorithm on a social media platform?

As algorithms become more invisibly integrated into our daily lives and choices, results of human-AI collaboration may become less obvious and, by default, more socially accepted as part of the natural fabric of our daily decision making.

Overall, this is promising and innovative research that demonstrates how human-AI collaboration can help people to feel more confident about providing support. Empathy can be a skill learned from role models and through practice. A scalable empathy-coaching tool that can be easily integrated into online communication exemplifies how AI-systems can be used to facilitate positive human connection.

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Can AI Be Used To Enhance Empathy?

New research suggests AI tools can facilitate empathic language, but whether AI can improve perceived empathy remains uncertain.

The goal is to augment the interaction through human-AI collaboration, rather than replace human interaction with AI-generated responses.

As algorithms become more invisibly integrated into our daily lives and choices, results of human-AI collaboration may become less obvious and, by default, more socially accepted as part of the natural fabric of our daily decision making.

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