AI, Empathy, and Designing for the Future of Digital Health

The emergence of artificial intelligence has brought about a collective state of high anxiety – with some hailing a bright future of automation and efficiency, and others seeing a threat to our autonomy, our jobs and fundamental human connection. Pick your way amongst the polemic narratives, though, and you get a different – more measured – picture. This technology is already beginning to permeate our everyday lives, in very real and practical ways – whether that's automated checkouts, social media algorithms or artificial intelligence lawyers. Incrementally, 'robots' – by which we mean a machine with digital automation or artificial intelligence technology – are starting to take over or contribute towards tasks that were previously handled by humans. However, the grand visions of automated cities and JARVIS-like personal assistants are still a long way from being commercially available.