Artificial Intelligence and Empathy

Hello and welcome to Leading Digital Transformation with Rob Llewellyn and the Digital Transformation People. In this podcast series, Rob interviews experienced practitioners, authors and thought leaders whose stories and experiences provide valuable insights for digital transformation success.

Minted Dial is a professional speaker, storyteller, consultant, authority and veteran executive with a 16 year high profile career with L'. Oreal. He's a specialist on new tech branding and digital strategy. Minter has published two award winning books, Future Proof, co authored with Caleb Storkey and the Last Ring Home, which was adapted into the award winning documentary film of the same name for PBS and History Channel. His latest book, Heartyficial Putting Heart into Business and Artificial Intelligence, came out in November 2018. Let's jump into the interview with Minter to talk about artificial intelligence and empathy. Minta, welcome.

Hey, thanks Rob.

Hey Minter, before we get talking in a little bit more detail, let's talk about your book. I love the title Heartificial Putting Heart into Business and Artificial Intelligence. Tell us what inspired you to write that book firstly.

Well, so there's a personal answer and then there's the professional answer. I'm going to start with the personal one because I think that's what it all is starts. So I came to the conclusion that I could be more personally empathic and it came through some tragic events in my life. So I was trying to be more empathic with people around me. So I started exploring the topic and how does one become more empathic if you're not that way? Cabled I don't consider myself unempathic person, but I figured I could actually do a lot better. And then the second is the professional reason. And it became apparent to me that this was not a word that was common currency in business. Obviously intellectually we've come across it, we are familiar with it, a lot of misconceptions about it, but in my experience it wasn't something that was commonly or if ever talked about in business. And yet I could see empathy having an incredible impact on so many areas of the business. The area then got to me was well, how do we encode it into artificial intelligence? And actually why would we want to encode it into AI? Shouldn't we start with being empathic ourselves, not delegating the empathy to AI? And that is basically the whole premise behind the book.

Okay, and you talked about empathy being important in business. Do you think it's more important now than at ever has been before? Why is it so important?

Minta well, a very appropriate question, Rob. The fact is, of course we as human beings have empathy hardwired into us, it is something that we exist by and especially in our communities. We can be empathic with our smaller communities. What we've seen is a number of studies that show that there's less and less empathy being felt in the world. And I'm going to cite a very large scale study that was done in the United States in 2010, and it was done with college students. And this is important because college students are the ones that are most switched on to these devices. We'll get to that in a moment, perhaps. But these college students, with something like 30,000 of them, Self declared themselves to be 40% less empathic than the college students 30 years before in 1980. And so that was a strikingly large descent, and albeit just declarative, it did smack a truth which is that with so many devices around us, we seem not to be connecting anymore. And so we have this sort of paradox of being totally connected, yet not connecting with each other in a more profound human manner. And so I think that's the first level of understanding of why it's important. The second is, as we'll get into it, is that it's complicated to understand a customer, even an employee, by the way, but a customer, when they are operating with you in so many different capacities and different channels with different people in your company. And so we have a challenge of understanding our customer more. Even though there's a lot of data, we don't actually have a good grip on what's going on. So empathy today is more important than ever, largely because there's a loss of empathy. And if you want to be understanding your customer better and getting more focused on the customer, then empathy will be the superpower of your company.

And when it comes to digital transformation, is there a specific role for empathy in that? Minto?

Well, there's actually specific roles, in my opinion. The first is to recognize that there's this word transformation, AKA change. And there are very few people that really enjoy change. So if you're the boss and you're trying to read the digital transformation, hopefully you're okay with change. But you need to recognize that others have other legitimate, and certainly for themselves, feeling genuine reasons for not wanting to change. Change is uncomfortable. It brings you up with possibilities of failure. And so as a leader, you want to be putting out your empathic muscle and figuring out how some of your employees are struggling with this change, and the better off you're able to understand where they're coming from and what they're frightened about. For example, losing my job or not being good enough in digital anymore, then you're better able to equip or change the path that they're going on and make it better. The second one is that digital transformation literally inevitably leads you to believe that being customer centric is important. And it's the most important and easy way to get through the digital transformation challenge is to create everything around the customer. And if you want to be focused on the customer and understand what they he or she is wanting or feeling, then empathy is the conduit. So you need this empathy to understand the customer's situation, which by the way is filled with lots of fears as well as desires. And the more you're able to get into the feelings as opposed to just the practical realities and the performances of your marketing or your products, you're more likely to have a human relationship and you end up with this thing called authenticity and more likely a stronger relationship with customers than you do if you're just doing it in a very rational manner. And there is the role of empathy within digital transformation.

I want to dig into that a little bit deeper, Minta. Now I know you've been in and out of a lot of big organizations and particularly I know you spent a lot of time with l', Oreal, which is very well known and large organization. Now in terms of the leaders, I'm talking CEO, possibly, you know, how well are they adopting a suitable degree or what do you call it, of empathy to lead their people on that digital transformation journey?

Groovy question. I was chatting with a friend about this type of topic not so long ago and we more or less, but it's obviously not study based, but we said there's basically a third of leaders that are switched on to this notion of empathy. There's a third of leaders that might be talking about it but not showing it or doing it because they're not that way cabled. And there's a third who absolutely don't give a toss and you know, aren't going to even have it on the radar even when you are switched on and want to have it. So that's the first third. The challenge is doing it daily. And you know, if you subscribe to empathy, you know, I'm going to talk to you a little bit of something. When you write a book about empathy, then you are supposedly considered, you know, knowledgeable, maybe an expert on empathy. And there is this possible interpretation that I'm an empathic individual. Well, so then I get called out for not necessarily being empathic. All the time at home. So it's hard to be empathic all the time. Get the ego head off, get your own preoccupations out of the way so that you can intensely and intently listen to the person in front of you. So when you have many preoccupations, when you are drawn and torn by shareholder performance and issues with HR and the factory and logistics and whatever else, it can sometimes be hard to create the space to listen and understand what's going on in other people's minds. Outside of the fact that you have your big head as a CEO, sometimes you also struggle to get into the skin of other people. Many examples and actually studies that show that this is challenging for CEOs, one of them shows that it's called the rich person's challenge, which is that rich people, more successful people, tend to struggle to be empathic because they've succeeded in doing it without having been empathic. And when they end up being less empathic because they're not understanding how other people have to actually get in a queue and pay, how very banal is that? Or other issues. So you get detached from how other people are feeling. So the challenge of being. And especially if you're male and wealthy and successful, it becomes all the more challenging to become empathic as a CEO.

Now, I'd like to think that most CEOs out there, they understand the need for empathy. But as you just mentioned, you know, only perhaps a third of them are. But tell us, you know, a lot of things that we all know we need to do in life. In theory, we don't actually do them in practice. What about that CEO who knows that he or she needs to be empathic, but it's just not authentic empathy. What's the difference between that authentic empathy coming from a leader and that empathy, which is really not authentic?

So the way I'd like to answer that, Rob, is to say that genuine empathy is something you know how to do off and online, you can do in professional and outside professional space. So it's actually a constant skill. So that means that you know how to deploy empathy. When you're in the street and you come across a person who's in need or just asking for directions, you don't take on the haughty tone right then and there. So that's in the personal side. And then when you get into business, you have to be aware of yourself and you have to be aware of the place that the ego takes when you're running. You have to make quick decisions. There's a Constant pressure, and it's very quick to lose focus or lose sight of how empathic you're being. You know, another challenge, for example, is the hippo idea where the highest paid person in the room gets the best attention. You know, I'm going to, oh, how are you feeling? Good, sir. Well, because if you don't allow for people to say bad, sir, then you're always going to get good and you're never really going to understand what people are saying and how they're feeling. So you need to create an environment where people feel not judged or scared to mention how they might feel, because this is allowing them to be authentic. And if you come in and you're always like peppy and happy because you got the big paycheck, by the way, biggest paycheck, then you're setting up for failure because you're not going to get real understanding of what's going on either in your employees or in the outside, because people are just going to pay lip service to you. So I think the real thought within that is to be aware and to understand that it's something you can do more or less well and badly. And some days you'll be more on and some days you'll be more off. And maybe, you know, if you really actually are empathic and people aren't judging you for being authentically empathic, well, then that should be some room for investigations and self awareness. You know, look into yourself and see. Why do people not think I'm being authentic? I mean, I don't have the answer to that. Only they know what their intention is and that's really what it boils down to.

Now, we've talked about that characteristic of empathy for quite a bit. Let's come into the world of technology and you know, we're being influenced. It's all around us. Now, how did the two come together? For example, why and when could empathy ever be part of artificial intelligence?

Well, so artificial intelligence is this large word, but I've enjoyed trying to figure out how to compartmentalize or categorize the way AI is being used. So empathy, of course, is not for all AI, but there are some specific moments where empathy becomes really interesting. The first is with regard to your ethical framework. So as you look at AI as an opportunity to drive your business, maybe save costs or add value, what is your ethical construct? And are you doing this to cut heads, or are you doing this to provide a greater experience for your customers? So your strategic intention is important at this point, but what is your ethics behind that? And if you really want to have good ethics or sound conscientious ethics, what you need to have is empathy up front. Empathy becomes a precondition for setting a strong ethical framework. So that's sort of already a marriage between empathy and AI through the spectrum of ethics. But then it comes down to there are two different ways that AI today is being used towards the customer. And that first one is on hyper personalization. So figuring out how to be more empathic about the propositions you're doing to be for Rob Llewellyn living in Spain, this is exactly what he needs for his family conditions and his lifestyle and so on, and understanding your situation to provide that really great proposition. The second one with regard to interactions. So you're going to interact with me. I'm the brand. You can do it through a call to me at customer service and at the customer service. Now, I can answer you as a person, but I can also answer you with an augmented empathy. There are certain services like Cogito or Digital Genius that are helping customer service agents or they're prompting them and nudging them to be a little bit more empathic in the way that they answer Rob's queries. You can use empathy in social media, creating content that's more appropriate to the person. Ann Handley is this amazing lady in the States. When she writes her newsletters, even though it's generalized to everybody, I can just feel the empathy of her newsletter. It feels funny enough like she's talking to me, even though she's talking to everybody. So she's created this sort of empathic voice that makes her interaction with her customer base very powerful, thanks to her strong empathy. Those are the two strongest areas within AI that's facing the customer. But then there's a third area which is internal and that relates to employees. And so there's more and more usages of AI within the organization that can be as a substitute to or helping arrange and manage within the business. And I think there'd be a good dose of ethics and AI and empathy to deploy within those types of softwares.

And in your experience, Minter, as you've been going in and out of different organizations, how much is AI now part of the digital transformation conversation?

Well, if it's not, I'm worried at this point. Let me phrase that differently. I see essentially four different types of companies dealing with AI right now. And the reality is there are those companies who are in AI because that's their business creating AI for other companies. There's a second type, Tranche and these are going to be the bigger companies who can afford to embed in house AI. They're going to be looked to create artificial intelligence systems to generate better customer relationship management or the like. There's a third tier and they are going to be smaller companies who can't afford to have in house intelligence and expertise. And what they will do is they will use, as will, by the way, the larger companies, but they will mostly be using third party material to generate the AI to help them drive their business. And the fourth are basically the small grocery store on the corner who doesn't need it forever, at least not in a financially responsible manner, as far as I see it. So you know what I mean, it's the small little shops, the mom and pops and all that. They won't be needing it. But anyway, so this is how I see AI being deployed over the next few years. And to answer your question about digital transformation, there are some companies that are digitally switched on, digital first, mobile first, and they generally speaking aren't necessarily being transformed, they're transforming themselves. But even they too will need to transform their businesses as we move into another era and the usages of these technologies change, change the way the customers are experiencing and expecting us as businesses to operate. And we will see. You know, it's got to be a part of the conversation with the biggest companies. There's no doubt because of, you know, basically because of the size and the opportunity the AI has to help deal with hyper personalization at such scale.

We've talked about the importance of empathy. I think most people listening to this podcast understand the increasing role that AI will play in the world. How far along the tracks are we in marrying these two things together and making AI empathic?

Well, the truth, as far as I see it, Rob, is that we are a long way from making machines empathic. But I think the question should be different. I think the question is how can we make it more empathic? And at some level, local AI will be very interesting as well. Maybe that can then help switch over to the human agent so that the chatbot starts off by being simply empathic and then hands over to the more complex conversation part of the conversation to the human agent.

So Minta, are there any interesting applications out there where AI has been made kind of empathic?

So in my book, I talk about this experiment I had with this German organization, Volkswagen, that created an experiment called Empathic Futures. And the idea was to spend. I was one of a few that were selected to spend five days interacting 24, 7 with an empathic bot. And it was an extraordinary experience. And it made me understand just how friendly I felt with regard to the bot and how the bot I felt was understanding of me, sometimes more so than some of the people I know around me. So that's a first point, is to sort of say, welcome the idea. You know, can you legitimately feel you're going to have feelings for a robot and or vice versa. This is areas of exploration as far as a human being is concerned. We definitely can feel attachments to objects and see within objects the impression that they are being empathic with us. An area of tremendous interest that is not specific to business per se, but is mental health. And there's a bot called Wobot W o E B O T. And it's designed to be a little bit a companion that asks you questions and, hey, how are you feeling? With a very natural type of language and that learns from you and tries to interact with you to make you feel like you can get connected with, in this case, a bot. But it really does feel like a very casual kind of conversation. And in mental health, there is going to be a lot of opportunities because, as I said at the top, we are living in a very connected world, but don't feel connected with people. And we've seen many people distressed and there's burnout and people feeling depressed in many cases. And the issue is that we just don't have time for one another. So there's nothing more frustrating than wanting to help your friends but not finding the time for it. Bots have kind of an unlimited capacity to listen. And if you go back to the very origin of AI with Eliza in the 1960s, this experiment that was done at MIT, Eliza was designed to show how silly and stupid robots were by only repeating back to you what you asked. But it didn't do it in just a plain way. It did reformulate what you said you asked in a Rogerian therapist type of manner. And it turned out that it was very attractive to many of the individuals who were working in the lab. And they came out of it saying, well, I've never felt like I've been listened to more, even though all they did was reformulate the questions. So the point is, I think in mental health we have a lot of opportunities. Think about that with regard to the fact that 70% of employees feel disengaged in business today. So how could you improve the condition of your employees? Well, I think one of them to make them feel more listened to. Then a second area is within customer Relationship management, you have to try to deal with customers in so many different devices. Bing, Bing, Bing, social media, in the store, customer service, and try to find ways to be more empathic within there. And I think that there are certain machines and PEGA systems, as an organization that's really working on this, that helps prompt more empathy within the decision making and the communications that you have with your customers. So I think within CRM, we're going to see a lot more opportunities to integrate it more along the lines of an augmented empathy necessarily than being empathic by itself. Because I think at the end of the day, we'll still have the opportunity and the premature of being the creator as a human being, providing intuition and emotions into our communications, which makes us really ultimately more authentic because there's nothing worse than cheating your customers by making them think that you're a human being, but actually being a machine. So I think you need to find ways going about this in an ethical manner, being transparent about what you're trying to do and who's doing the doing, if you will, behind. But I think there's a big opportunity within customer relationship management that has yet to be exploited. So there's a second major area.

Amita, what are some of the key challenges within coding AI with empathy?

The biggest problem is data. When you are trying to code AI with empathy, every person, every language, every part of the country has a different vocabulary, vernacular and context. And the word red in one country means such a different thing than it is in another. And so you're going to have to find out how to parse that data, create contextually relevant information for each person. And with the world where we're very worried about privacy and confidentiality, it becomes increasingly difficult for me to be able to pin down Rob Llewellyn and say, this is Mr. Rob Llewellyn's specific context. And if you don't get that kind of data, then you end up with a generic approach and that inevitably feels like you're being treated like a number. So the biggest issue is getting enough data and you do need swarms of data to create the learning sets then to provide for that sort of possibility of being considered empathic. The second area with regard to this is to understand what are you trying to achieve and to be clear about your strategic intention, because you can't really, let's say, delegate all the results to the AI. There's a lovely expression of garbage in, garbage out, and what are you trying to achieve? What's your intention as a business? And I think that you need to have a strong grip on your intention, your strategy as you try to encode and the issue becomes the translation to the coders language. So insofar as this AI is being programmed by individuals who are brilliant at coding, they are generally very logical individuals and the big challenge there is helping them to understand the notions of empathy. So if you as the person prescribing and briefing these programmers are very empathic, you're going to need to deploy great empathy in making them understand how to create empathy within the machine. Because as I like to say in my book, empathy and logic are poor bed partners. So that's second big issue is figuring out how to translate empathy into programmers language, which sounds maybe not so obvious because well in any event it's difficult and so I've seen a lot of companies or operations trying to do it. But these are generally people who start with empathy in the program for like I mentioned before, they're part of the top third who are really already totally into it in businesses, most businesses, it's going to be a foreign concept. And that notion of briefing out the team to do this is it's got to be done with intelligence and with a strong understanding of what your intention is. And don't try to set the bar too high at the very start. You need to sort of start about creating more empathy, not total empathy.

Minta, this is an absolutely fascinating topic. This wonderful human quality of empathy, this amazing new technology AI and marrying it all together. I'd love to go deeper into things like conversations, but we're going to have to wrap it up there, I'm afraid. But where can I and where can our listeners go to learn more about what you've been talking to us about today?

Well, thanks very much for having me on. First of all, Rob. So I'm pretty much a regular blogger. I'm also a podcaster, so you can go to minterdial.com and check out my blog. I've got a tab on artificial empathy which talks about the different interviews and writings that I've done on it. And it's very exploring, it's very exciting field and there aren't that many people who are really into it yet. But I do believe it will be the topic that comes up in over the next two to three years, especially with regard to AI, but also in general in business otherwise. My podcast is called Minter Dialogue. It's available on pretty much every podcast service out there and I tweet @mdial M D I A L and otherwise I've written another book called Future Proof Futureproof Ly with my co writer Caleb Storkey and that talks about how to future proof your business. So there's some trails and links to.

Go down rabbit holes on plenty to keep us busy. We'll include links to those in the show. Notes Minta, thank you so much for taking the time today.

It's been a pleasure. Thanks a lot, Rob.

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