Will the next Siri be empathetic?

Rupa Chaturvedi is the head of design of visual intelligence at Sentient Technologies. AI assistants are having their moment. Just a week ago, Google announced the aptly named Assistant, an AI capable of carrying on an "ongoing two-way dialog." It joins a field crowded with Apple's Siri, Amazon's Alexa, Microsoft's Cortana, Facebook's M, the unreleased Viv and a whole host of others. But right now, while these assistants can book a meeting, tell you the weather or give you directions to a coffee shop, they still feel a bit cold.