「 In the ideal world of engineered empathy」
People writing comments with an AI recently caught my attention. I saw them in some of my posts but also in others too. Like, how socially inept have we become that we need AI to weave words just to relate to others?
Perhaps, we’re not socially inept and there can be a million reasons why. But it's a sad reality that some of us would have used AI to think for them and to interact. Maybe soon, this will be the norm and I can understand why this can be helpful for a certain set of people.
I have never been diagnosed or even got myself properly checked. But, based on my entire life’s experience with relating to others and pertaining to empathy, I am probably on the lower end. I could never know what to say when someone is experiencing pain, death, or all types of emotions. I could not sympathize if they are going through problems in life. I tend to scramble to find words and I am not expressive at all. All I know is that, if they have a problem, how can I help fix it? Except with death, I can’t fix that one.
Do I expect people to do the same? honestly no. In fact, sometimes I find it strange when people show some empathy and care. It's probably why those who really show me empathy and care that beyond superficial relationship, really changed my life and restores a little bit of my faith in humanity.
That being said, if a person like me whose default is just that we don't know how to feel empathy, wants to say things to be more empathetic, AI can give us some lists on what to say. They don’t have emotion per se but they have strings of words, that when we send it to someone going through something just so they could feel like “ oh that person gets me” or some other variations.
In an ideal world, AI would have fixed my social ineptitude. It could help me relate more to a lot of people and even fixed relationships that I failed to maintain. AI would know just the right words to say to the other person without the chance of me offending them or burning the bridges. I can train AI to give me some lists of what to say though it’s superficial but to someone like me, that’s a means of survival, a way to blend in into some groups or the world.
With AI, it would be a faster way to appear to be more social and be able to relate to others. But, just as anything in life, I tend to take the difficult approach to fix my social glitches.
I know that there are sayings to keep a few close friends than shallow ones but it would be nicer to actually appear more friendly or be more approachable than distant. At least, this is one of my goal I discovered this year.
Maintaining any kind of relationship can be quite a challenge for me as well. There are layers to relationships such as communications, consistency, reciprocity and even effort. In an ideal world, AI could help with real-time feedback. It’s like having a personal coach to tell you about things. It might sound superficial but in an ideal world, this is what a person like me needs.
In my most ideal world, AI would help me keep track of my friends, connections, or my entire network on a spreadsheet style just how I manage and keep track of things. It probably sounds too much but that's what a person like me needs.
But I didn’t rely on AI which is probably why I still suck at it despite reading a lot of books on how to make friends. And at least, I’ve finally got some awareness which is a good starting point 😀