BACKGROUND
Empathy, a cornerstone of human interaction, is a unique quality to humans that Large Language Models (LLMs) are believed to lack.
OBJECTIVE
Our study aims to review the literature on the capacity of LLMs in demonstrating empathy
METHODS
We conducted a literature search on MEDLINE up to July 2023. Included were English language full-length publications that evaluated empathy in LLMs outputs. Excluded were papers evaluating other topics related to emotional intelligence that were not specifically empathy.
RESULTS
Seven publications ultimately met the inclusion criteria. All studies included in this review were published in 2023. All studies but one focused on ChatGPT-3.5 by OpenAI. Only one study evaluated empathy based on objective metrics, and all others used subjective human assessment. The studies reported LLMs to exhibit elements of empathy, including emotions recognition and emotional support in diverse contexts, most of which were related to healthcare. In some cases, LLMs were observed to outperform humans in empathy-related tasks.
CONCLUSIONS
LLMs demonstrated some aspects of empathy in variable scenarios, mainly related to healthcare. The empathy may be considered “cognitive” empathy. Social skills are a fundamental aspect of intelligence, thus further research is imperative to enhance these skills in AI.