18 pages, 4 figures, 6 tables. Title updated from "Talk, Listen, Connect: Navigating Empathy in Human-AI Interactions" to "Talk, Listen, Connect: How Humans and AI Evaluate Empathy in Responses to Emotionally Charged Narratives" in this version. This is version 3 (v3) of the paper. All previous citations of arXiv:2409.15550 with the old title still refer to the same paper
Social interactions promote well-being, yet barriers like geographic distance, time limitations, and mental health conditions can limit face-to-face interactions. Emotionally responsive AI systems, such as chatbots, offer new opportunities for social and emotional support, but raise critical questions about how empathy is perceived and experienced in human-AI interactions. This study examines how empathy is evaluated in AI-generated versus human responses. Using personal narratives, we explored how persona attributes (e.g., gender, empathic traits, shared experiences) and story qualities affect empathy ratings. We compared responses from standard and fine-tuned AI models with human judgments. Results show that while humans are highly sensitive to emotional vividness and shared experience, AI-responses are less influenced by these cues, often lack nuance in empathic expression. These findings highlight challenges in designing emotionally intelligent systems that respond meaningfully across diverse users and contexts, and informs the design of ethically aware tools to support social connection and well-being.
EmoMed: An Emotionally-Aware Agent for Multimodal Medical Support with Real-Time Information Retrieval
ISP RAS Research Center for Trusted Artificial Intelligence(俄罗斯科学院信息学与自动化研究所可信人工智能研究中心);National University of Science and Technology (NUST) MISIS(国立科技大学MISIS);Innopolis University(Innopolis大学);SkolTech(斯科尔科沃科技学院);SB AI Lab(SB人工智能实验室)
Feeling Machines: Ethics, Culture, and the Rise of Emotional AI
Fraunhofer IPK(弗劳恩霍夫生产系统与设计技术研究所);TU Berlin(柏林工业大学);Université Sorbonne Paris Nord(索邦巴黎北大学);University of Augsburg(奥格斯堡大学);EM Lyon Business School(里昂商学院);EPITA(法国巴黎计算机及自动化学院);Università di Pisa(比萨大学);University of Bamberg(班贝格大学);Universidad Central de Venezuela(委内瑞拉中央大学);RWTH Aachen University(亚琛工业大学);Harz University of Applied Sciences(哈茨应用技术大学);University of Passau(帕绍大学);SCAI, Sorbonne Université(索邦大学人工智能中心);University of Hamburg(汉堡大学);Osnabrueck University(奥斯纳布吕克大学);ICM, LIP6 UMR 7606 CNRS(法国国家科学研究中心皮埃尔和玛丽居里大学计算机科学实验室);Sorbonne Université(索邦大学)