Ethics and Emotional Intelligence in a Future of AI

There's no doubt Artificial Intelligence (AI)–machines that reproduce human thought and actions–is on the rise, both in the scientific community and in the news. And along with AI, there comes "emotional AI," from systems that can detect users' emotions and adjust their responses accordingly, to learning programs that provide emotional analysis, to devices, such as smart speakers and virtual assistants, that mimic human interactions. As the pace of AI development and implementation accelerates–with the potential to change the ways we live and work–the ethics and empathy that guide those designing technology of our future will have far-reaching consequences. It is this moral dimension that concerns me most: do the organizations and software developers creating these programs have an ethical rudder? Long before the concept of AI became commonplace, science fiction writer Isaac Asimov introduced the "Three Laws of Robotics" in his 1942 short story "Runaround" (which was later included in his 1950 collection, I, Robot): Much of Asimov's robot-based fiction hinges upon robots finding loopholes in their interpretations of the laws, which are programmed into them as a safety measure that cannot be bypassed.