THE ROLE OF AI IN ENHANCING EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

Abstract

This chapter discusses artificial intelligence’s (AI) role in improving emotional intelligence, an essential tool for both personal and professional spheres of life. Some such AI tools, including Chat GPT, Poised, and Crystal, are so designed to provide users with stimulating conversations, toward more reflective self-awareness, emotional control, and empathy. The paper reviews ways AI mimics human interactions in presenting its propositions to the users: through reflective exercises, natural scenario simulations, and empathetic engagement. Although being highly capable, AI finds it really hard to emote with such subtle human emotions, like sarcasm or veiled aggression, and would hardly be able to connect at an emotional level. The fact is that facilitating emotional learning with the use of AI could easily lead to overdependence on those tools, thereby limiting real-life social practice with all sorts of detrimental effects on emotional growth. This chapter, therefore, while not striking a balanced element of analysis of AI’s advantages and limitations, emphasizes AI’s future potential in providing a judgment-free environment for developing emotional intelligence but outlines the caution that true emotional understanding is always through human-to-human interaction. Future development in this particular domain of AI is not ruled out but demands careful and refined ethical consideration.