Two weeks ago I started a course on Artificial Intelligence. I wrote these lines 10 days before we started, let me share them with you: I'm genuinely excited about the course but I can’t help but wonder what happens to empathy as technology continues to evolve.
AI fascinates me because it challenges the way we think, work, and communicate. It’s efficient, fast, and increasingly intelligent. But it also makes me pause and ask: what happens to the emotional layer that defines us as humans? Can empathy, that deep ability to truly understand and feel with others, survive in a world that’s becoming more digital every day?
In my work as a moderator and interviewer, I often talk about the importance of listening between the lines, hearing not only what people say, but what they don’t say. I’m not sure AI can do that. Algorithms can analyse tone and sentiment, but can they feel compassion? Can they truly care?
Technology can help us save time, process data, and even predict behaviour, but I believe it can’t replace presence, and it should not do so, the warmth of a genuine look, the silence that holds understanding, or the emotion in a trembling voice. These are the moments that make us human, and I believe they are what leadership, communication, and creativity will continue to depend on.
So maybe the challenge isn’t to resist technology, but to balance it, to make sure empathy evolves with it, not instead of it. Because a future built only on intelligence, artificial or not, won’t be enough. The real innovation will come from those who manage to combine data with heart, logic with kindness, and progress with purpose.
