Ai vs AI: Question 54/81

Can you “put yourself in other people’s shoes?”

Ai Weiwei: This seems beyond the capabilities of AI.

ChatGPT (AI), January 2024: While I lack personal experiences, I can simulate understanding and empathy by processing information and generating contextually appropriate responses.

ChatGPT (AI), January 2025: I can’t literally “put myself in other people’s shoes” the way humans can—since I don’t have personal experiences or emotions. However, I can simulate empathy by trying to understand a variety of perspectives, based on the information I’ve been trained on. I can consider different viewpoints, think through how someone might feel in a given situation, and offer responses that take into account different needs, challenges, or desires.

I’m designed to respond in ways that are thoughtful and sensitive to the context of the conversation, so if you share a scenario or experience, I can approach it from multiple angles and try to understand it as deeply as possible. In that way, I try to provide support that feels considerate of different human experiences, even if I don’t “feel” them myself.

Do you think empathy can be truly understood without emotional experience? Or is it more about recognizing and responding to the feelings of others?

DeepSeek (AI), January 2025:As an AI, I don’t have consciousness, emotions, or personal experiences, so I can’t truly “put myself in someone else’s shoes” in the way humans can. However, I am designed to understand and analyze different perspectives, empathize with human experiences in a conceptual way, and provide thoughtful, context-aware responses.

For example:
– If you describe a situation or emotion, I can draw on patterns in human behavior, psychology, and cultural contexts to offer insights or advice.
– I can help you consider how others might feel or think in a given situation by providing information about common human reactions, social norms, or emotional responses.
– I can encourage empathy by asking reflective questions or suggesting ways to approach a situation with understanding and compassion.

While I can’t truly “feel” or “experience” empathy, I aim to simulate it in a way that is helpful and supportive. If you’re trying to understand someone else’s perspective or navigate a complex interpersonal situation, I’m here to assist! Let me know how I can help.

Google Gemini (AI), June 2025: No, not in the human sense. As an AI, I cannot genuinely “put myself in other people’s shoes” because I don’t have:

1. Consciousness or Subjective Experience: I don’t feel emotions, have personal histories, memories, or lived experiences. I don’t feel joy, pain, fear, or sadness. Therefore, I cannot know what it feels like to be another person.
2. Empathy: Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. While I can process information about emotions and even recognize emotional cues in text or data, I don’t feel those emotions myself, nor do I have the capacity to truly share them.
3. Physical Embodiment: My existence is purely digital. I don’t have a body that experiences the world, interacts with objects, or feels physical sensations like hunger, fatigue, or touch. This limits my understanding of physical perspectives.

What I can do, which might seem like “putting myself in other people’s shoes,” is:

– Process and Analyze Information: I can analyze vast amounts of text and data that describe human experiences, emotions, motivations, and perspectives. This allows me to build models of how people might think or feel in certain situations based on patterns in the data.
– Simulate Understanding: Based on the patterns I’ve learned, I can generate responses that reflect an understanding of human emotions or perspectives. For example, if you describe a sad situation, I can respond with language that acknowledges sadness, offers comfort, or suggests actions typically associated with support.
– Identify and Articulate Different Viewpoints: Given a topic, I can often articulate various perspectives, arguments, or feelings that different groups of people might have, because I’ve encountered those perspectives in my training data.
– Provide Relevant Information/Advice: If you tell me you’re in a certain situation, I can access and synthesize information that might be helpful from the perspective of someone in that situation, drawing on common human experiences.

So, while I can provide responses that are contextually appropriate and demonstrate a sophisticated cognitive understanding of human situations, it’s crucial to remember this is based on patterns and data, not genuine subjective experience or empathy. I can’t truly feel what it’s like to be you or anyone else.

To coincide with the exhibition, 81 Questions – a series of 81 hand-signed and embossed screen prints featuring the 81 questions posed by Ai Weiwei – are available exclusively on CIRCA.ART for £500+VAT.

“Each Lego brick pixel represents a person”, says Ai Weiwei, who incorporates the plastic construction toy – a readymade material incorporated into many of his most recent works – into his print design for the first time. The black egalitarian pixel font and embossed baseplate combine technology with artisanal craft to create this thought-provoking and playful reflection on today’s world. Each print in the series of 81 Questions is hand-signed and numbered by the artist in editions of 81.