Machines with heart: exploring empathy in the age of technology. An interview with Jodi Halpern and Jonathon Keats. From the interview:

Halpern: Before modern science, before Descartes and the earliest sketches of the modern scientific method, in ancient philosophy, science and philosophy were sort of the same thing.  Regarding our topic, both asked how one person could understand another person’s mind. Both took engaged curiosity to be central. In Aristotle, there’s this parable of a man staring at the stars and being so absorbed that he fell into a well.  His curiosity was a motivation in and of itself. Today, research often has to be so immediately practical — to get grants and so on — that we lose touch with what science originally was….

Keats: I believe that philosophy and science — like most every discipline — have moved toward greater and greater specialization. That’s completely understandable and legitimate at one level: as you build knowledge, you get to a stage where any given individual isn’t going to be versed in all of it.

The arts are the exception to this rule. Everything and anything can be art now. That can be detrimental, but also opens up enormous potential to explore any topic using any methodology. Art is a space that facilitates philosophy as philosophy needs to be done. The freedom given by the art world needs to be taken as a challenge to pursue curiosity in the most encompassing and inviting ways possible….

Halpern: We ask, can we empathize with machines, and can machines empathize with us? We can empathize with machines, yes. We can make a very simple stick figure that evokes empathy. There’s no question.

But can they have empathy for us? I have two hours on YouTube on this question. Right now, we obviously don’t have AI, but in principle? I don’t rule it out.

But the real question for me isn’t whether we can create therapeutic relationships with machines, but should we? AI psychotherapy, for example. The problem for me is if this machine-human interaction replaces transformational empathy between two human beings. There should be a co-vulnerability, a co-mortality. So now some people have heard my work and want to create a mortal AI!

h/t Born Free @defYenLight