Ethically Speaking

Abstract

The ethics of exploiting human emotions in computer applications has been a major topic of research and discussion in affective computing and social robots. A major concern is that such exploitation may increase users’ tendency to anthropomorphise computers and robots and involuntarily attribute non-existent human qualities such as agency and morality to them. In the context of customer service where empathy plays a major role in responding to customers in affectively satisfying ways, significant progress is being made towards endowing artificial conversational agents with the ability to show empathy during their service encounters with customers. In this chapter, we first discuss why empathy in customer service can be a necessary and good thing but not if it is perceived as fabricated. Then we hypothesise how customers may see empathy from an artificial agent as fabricated but still find it as a good thing. Finally, we consider some risks of artificial empathy involving anthropomorphism.