Artificial intelligence starts to gain empathy for humans - EDN

Artificial intelligence (AI) is finding a home in many applications, from industrial automation to autonomous vehicles. Perhaps its most personal impact, however, is when the AI must interact with humans in providing information and services. For human interaction, the next trend for AI to embrace is the addition of emotional intelligence. When the Amazon Echo first came out in 2014, I viewed it as a perfect example of an IoT device. It required a minimum of onboard hardware capability, achieving most of its impressive capability in understanding and responding to human speech by using cloud-connected resources.