Good bot, bad bot: Can you trust a robot that cares?

Less Hal and more Her, responding warmly to the feelings of others may no longer be a uniquely animal quality. Empathetic responses are being integrated into artificial intelligence and robotics, raising sticky ethical questions. The shift can be subtle or overt -- from emotionally appropriate gestures from your smartphone's voice assistant, to comforting robotics in clinical situations. For instance, Danielle Krettek, the founder of Google's Empathy Lab, said her work has contributed to some of the Google Assistant's apparent ability to attune to your mood. "When you say, 'I'm feeling depressed', instead of giving you a description of what depression is, it [might say], 'you know what, a lot of people feel that. You're not alone'," she explained at the design conference Semi Permanent in Sydney.