Emotional intelligence driven by artificial intelligence

In recent years we have seen an unprecedented advance in artificial intelligence: ChatGPT, Wall-e, and other models that simulate human behavior and learning. But it has not yet been possible for an AI to develop emotional intelligence. The question here is whether it is possible for it to achieve it.

It is complicated to know if a friend or a family member needs a hug; humans use our emotional intelligence to read the needs of that person. Could we then know if a person we don't know directly needs a hug or not?

Emotional intelligence: how does it work?

In order to move from prejudice to judgment, human beings need information or data that bring us closer to knowledge about a specific issue. Thus, emotional intelligence, like any other type of intelligence, needs to be fed with knowledge. This knowledge is composed of the new information we have obtained about the concrete issue and the validation of previous knowledge from similar situations we have lived.

When a friend tells us about a situation they are living through, we compare this information with data from the past, we see if it can be something problematic or not for that person, and we act accordingly, with a hug or a reprimand. Everything depends on the judgment we make with the information we have.

Emotional intelligence vs artificial intelligence

The obvious question that follows is: will AI ever be able to do all this? The answer is just as obvious: who knows?

What we can be sure of is the current capability of AI. Artificial intelligence today can approach and even surpass humans in part of the process mentioned above.

Continuing with the explanation of what emotional intelligence is, the part of generating and processing the information prior to making the judgment can currently be carried out with AI. Even a good AI model, with enough data from a person (basic, attitudinal and behavioral), could perform this data processing better than a human being.

At present, AI still needs the human to make that final judgment with the processed data. AI could tell you that a person is unhappy and how unhappy they are, but it is a human who has to decide whether to give them a hug or not, and above all it is the human who has to give that hug.

The need to understand your customers

All of this brings us to a fundamental point for companies in terms of technological evolution. Artificial intelligence, at the current point where it is, allows companies to know whether your customer wants a hug or not, how much they want it, or whether you are going to lose that customer by giving it to them.

Knowing the level of customer engagement, based on the processing of all the data companies have at their fingertips, we can locate the point at which a customer is with our brand, and not only that. As we have commented, AI can do things in a similar or even better way than humans, and therefore we can currently predict what our customer is going to do once we embrace them.

AI, as we can see, is not simply a chat or image generator. AI brings a series of infinite possibilities to humans, and companies should not take long to start benefiting from them.