AI's just not that into you -- yet

For all their brilliance, our phones still have as much emotional intelligence as glue. Yet, as electronics become ever more important in our lives, it may make sense to start teaching them to be more aware of our feelings. Early glimpses of such efforts were afoot at a gathering of artificial-intelligence software developers, academics and researchers this week in Manhattan, where several talks focused on finding ways to add emotion into our robots, voice assistants and chatbots. "People are building these very intimate relationships with these companions, but right now these companions have no empathy," Rana el Kaliouby, CEO of emotional-recognition tech firm Affectiva, said onstage Tuesday at the inaugural O'Reilly Artificial Intelligence Conference. Teaching robots about emotion illustrates both the promise and huge challenges involved in developing AI tools. Artificial intelligence, which lets machines mimic human learning and problem solving, is already used to improve Google searches and scan Facebook photos for faces.