Why empathetic communication can help save the world

As we continue to accelerate AI and technological development and want to align that to our values, we need to make a clear choice in society if we want empathetic to be a value of ours or not. Today it’s not. I believe it should. Empathetic communication is much harder than non-empathetic communication, but it adds so much more value to society. I want to encourage you to approach any topic you are facing at home, at work, on social media or elsewhere by only asking questions for a while. See what happens. I also want to challenge all social media platforms to make it easier to create empathetic comments and posts by building it out as a tool next to emojis. Take care.

Empathetic communication is according to Oxford Languages showing an ability to understand and share the feelings of another. Empathy is shown in how much understanding and compassion we can give to another. In times of polarization, social media comments and conflicts, it’s often very hard to be empathetic in communication. That said, it’s equally important as it has ever been to learn and practice empathetic communication. Empathetic communication is important because it increases understanding and knowledge, brings people closer together rather than farther apart, and increases wellbeing amongst people.

In order to adopt empathetic communication, there are a couple of things that can help set you up for success:

Don’t take your own opinions too seriously - If you believe that you sit on all answers already, you’re going to struggle with empathetic communication. You’re also going to struggle with personal growth. So start by remembering that in a hundred thousand years from now, no-one will remember anything of what we know today. Perspective. When reading through for example social media comments, or watching a political debate, I believe people could be much more humble about that they may not sit on all the right answers.

Realize that you love other people - If you have no interest in the success of other people you are going to struggle with empathetic communication. Personally, I believe that a person is a person is a person, and that we are all created equal. I believe that deep inside ourselves we love one another, and we are meant to be together, collaborate, engage and hang out. Not just some of us, but all of us. By having love as your compass it will help you navigate your communication in a more empathetic way.

Acknowledge that empathetic communication is much much harder than non-empathetic communication - It’s very easy to dismiss another person's opinion by simply stating that they are stupid, especially if they called you stupid first, followed by a series of emojis and laughter. That’s probably the easiest thing to do in the world. However, it doesn’t add value to the conversation, or to society. Instead, if you invest in really seeking to understand the other person’s perspective, acknowledge their feelings, self-reflect on your own needs, and engage in a dialog of respect, you add value. But it’s much much harder. The feeling of anger or frustration is much easier to adopt than the feeling of unconditional love or empathy. Empathetic communication is hard. However, living in a society without it is over time even harder.

What is empathetic communication? There are several different frameworks for it. One that I’ve been using a lot is called the Nonviolent Communication (NVC) framework. It consists of four components:

1) Observations - What is objectively happening?

2) Feelings - What does it make us feel?

3) Needs - What do we need?

4) Wishes - What do we wish for?

By approaching a dialog in this way we can help unlock a deeper and more meaningful meeting between people of different perspectives. I’m not going to go through the NVC methodology in detail here, but if you want an overview of it I suggest you ask bard.google.com what it’s all about, read the book Nonviolent Communication, and maybe watch these shorter and longer YouTube videos.

My biggest advice to adopt empathetic communication is to invest in your ability to ask questions. Imagine discussing something with someone, and for the first 30 minutes you can only ask questions. How would that change the way you approach the topic? How would that make you come across? Since the vast majority of conversations in society don't lead with questions, it’s really a great way to add value.

I’ve been recently meeting with people from different perspectives of the Israel-Palestine conflict. A very complex conflict. So far, I haven’t made any statements about the conflict as a whole beyond that I wish that no-one on any side would suffer, and that we don’t resort to violence. That has more to do with my values than with this specific conflict though. My level of understanding of the conflict is not yet high enough to make statements, therefore I’ve primarily been asking questions to people from all sides. What I’ve found a bit surprising is that many people react very positively on that I simply ask a lot of hopefully meaningful questions.

I also believe that empathetic communication is an area where AI can help us learn and evolve. One example is to use chatbots to come up with better questions and more empathetic answers. You can as a starting point go to bard.google.com and put in the following so called prompt and add any statement you wish to approach:

Use the Nonviolent Communication (NVC) structure and create a response to this statement: “”

For example, if you put in:

Use the Nonviolent Communication (NVC) structure and create a response to this statement: "I don't believe in global warming"

You get as output:

Here is a possible NVC response to the statement "I don't believe in global warming":

Observation: I hear you saying that you don't believe in global warming.

Feelings: I feel concerned and curious when I hear people say this.

Needs: I have a need to understand why people don't believe in global warming, and to find ways to communicate about this issue in a way that is respectful and productive.

Request: Would you be willing to share more about why you don't believe in global warming? I'm open to hearing your perspective, and I'm hoping that we can learn from each other.

Let’s imagine that you believe in global warming and someone makes the statement that they don’t believe in global warming. Instead of jumping into frustrated argumentation, what if you tried to approach it this way? Then you focus on your and your fellow discussion partner’s own observations, feelings, needs, and requests. You avoid blaming, judging, or criticizing the other person. You express your feelings in a vulnerable and honest way. You make a clear and specific request. The purpose of this response is not to change the other person's mind about global warming. Rather, it is to open a dialogue and build understanding.

I believe that many people also have a responsibility to introduce more empathetic communication. One example is social media platforms. They should make it much easier to be empathetic in communication. One practical way they could do this is by introducing for example a heart-shaped button next to the emoji button, and if you press it you get a proposal of a comment that is empathetic and links to the topic of conversation. Or if you’ve drafted a response you could press the button and get feedback on how to make it more empathetic.

In the bigger AI ethics debate, a major topic is the so-called AI alignment problem. One of my biggest challenges with that problem is that I’m not sure what values we as a society have that we want to align AI to, making it very hard. Judging by how we conduct political debates and discussions on social media, empathetic is not a value we want to align AI to. The good thing is that I think that the acceleration of AI and technology at some point will force us to make clearer and more deliberate choices of what society we want to build.

Finally, I have a long way to go myself to become decent at empathetic communication, and I may never be. That said, I really believe it’s an important part of being net positive to society, so I will keep learning. I hope you will as well.

Thank you 🙏