I'm confident you've heard it all: "Artificial intelligence will take over my job," "my industry will cease to exist in a decade," "anyone working in creativity, design, writing, or labor is doomed," etc.

I'm sure you have also heard the counterargument, the nuanced defensive assertion that AI will not supplant humans because we would still need humans to operate AI and feed it instructions. How outrageously demeaning!

I am not here to argue or take sides, but I do have one question: How emotionally intelligent is artificial intelligence?

Did you hear about the Tesla's "phantom breaking" crash that resulted in an eight-car pileup and nine injuries, including a two-year-old? Why? As a result of the Tesla's abrupt application of full braking inside a tunnel after spotting a pigeon on the approaching roadway. As humans are aware that pigeons will fly away while they can, this pigeon, like all others, flew away. However, artificial intelligence identified it as a hazard, and as a result, went from full self driving mode to fully responsible for a deadly collision.

My friend joined a company recently. The organization utilizes "automated intelligent" email address generators. The name of my acquaintance is Mohammed A. Conveniently, the company he joined uses the email format: first name.first letter of last name @ company name.com; therefore, his email address would be mohammed.a@company name.com. There are so many Mohammads in the Middle East that it is impossible not to run into one at least once a day. Furthermore, the letter "A" is among the most common family name letters, so you are guaranteed to meet more than one Mohammad A in your lifetime, I myself have 7 saved in my phone contacts! Back to my friend, so he receives his designated email address mohammad.a2@companyname.com on his first day, not very intelligent, is it? It took the IT department three days to make the change because they had to get approval from the territory IT management in London, which in turn had to get approval from their Chicago office, which ironically is neither intelligent nor futuristic, yet so artificial in treatment.

Have you ever fed Google Translate, the most artificially intelligent translator of all time, local vernacular from where you're from and asked it to translate it into Brooklyn, Paris, or Madrid slang? Sorry to burst your bubble, but Google's understanding of slang is both unreliable and nearly always inaccurate. And the option to translate to a different slang? Still doesn't exist.

My two cents on the matter: I am so fortunate to be living in these times and witnessing this evolution, as I adore technology, am positively impressed by AI, and believe in the technology. As Google CEO Sundar Pichai once put it while at Davos way back in 2018: “AI is probably the most important thing humanity has ever worked on. I think of it as something more profound than electricity or fire.” I believe this to be true. AI will help us save time, produce more accurate and efficient results, and help us run exponentially quicker than we do now - not sure if this particular one is all a good thing.

AI will have a significant impact on the medical, educational, creative, and engineering industries. But that is it, support, not dominance or absolute control. Every human revolution and evolution has resulted in new professions, vocabulary, and approaches to daily life; AI will be no different. Those who count on AI possessing emotional intelligence in each and every circumstance as a human does, to act, react, and be unequivocally affected as a human would in each instance, are, in my opinion, mistaken, at least not in our lifetime. Artificial will stay artificial, and intelligence will stop at intelligence. We will not witness an “E” for emotions, or “I” for instinct.