Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly advancing, as seen by the explosion of chatbots developed by OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, and others. While AI delivers enormous productivity gains, it lacks human emotional intelligence — the ability to understand, empathize, and connect on an emotional level.
As automation proliferates, emotional intelligence becomes even more critical across the workforce. A Brandon Hall Group™ research brief, commissioned by EI Powered by MPS, explores the growing importance of emotional intelligence in the age of AI.
The report reveals that emotional intelligence enables collaboration, effective leadership, adaptability, better customer service, and ethical decision-making. It provides solutions to potential issues arising from AI, such as job displacement and dehumanization.
With AI in the process of taking over more routine and analytical tasks, the ‘softer’ skills of emotional intelligence — empathy, communication, motivation — are crucial for managers and employees alike. Leadership training is already reflecting this shift, with 58% of organizations targeting emotional intelligence and 55% focusing on empathy, according to Brandon Hall Group™ research.
The research brief provides examples of how AI can improve learning, through personalized recommendations and adaptive learning platforms. However, it cautions the reader that AI lacks human creativity, emotional support, and cultural awareness. This is where learning professionals must step in to address these gaps. Instructional designers and L&D leaders need heightened expertise to contextualize and humanize AI-generated learning content. Curriculum must be designed around emotional intelligence in order to fully engage today’s diverse learners.
Understanding the Emotional Limits of AI
As artificial intelligence continues to evolve, it raises an important question: Can AI truly understand human emotions? The answer lies in recognizing both the strengths and limits of current AI technologies.
AI does not possess emotional intelligence in the human sense because it lacks self-awareness and the ability to experience emotions. Emotional intelligence isn’t just about recognizing emotional cues; it’s about interpreting them through a lens of personal experience, values, and social context. These are deeply human capabilities that emerge from consciousness, relationships, and lived experiences—none of which AI has.
Empathy, a core part of emotional intelligence, requires more than just identifying a person’s feelings. It involves truly feeling with someone, understanding their emotional state through shared experience and emotional resonance. While AI can be programmed to respond empathetically in language, these responses are simulations based on patterns in data, not genuine emotional connection.
That said, AI can recognize emotions to an extent. Through technologies like facial recognition, voice analysis, and sentiment detection, AI can infer emotional states such as happiness, anger, or frustration. These capabilities fall under the field of ‘affective computing.’ However, such detection is often limited to surface-level cues and lacks the depth of cultural, contextual, and situational understanding that humans naturally bring to emotional interpretation.
Ultimately, while AI can mimic some aspects of emotional response, it cannot replicate the full spectrum of emotional intelligence. Instead of viewing this as a limitation, it presents a powerful opportunity: combining AI’s analytical speed and scalability with human empathy and insight creates a uniquely effective partnership.
What’s the Difference Between Emotional Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence?
At their core, emotional intelligence (EQ) and artificial intelligence (AI) serve fundamentally different purposes. Emotional intelligence refers to the human capacity to perceive, manage, and influence emotions — in ourselves and others. It’s rooted in empathy, self-awareness, and social skills. AI, by contrast, is a technological construct that processes data to replicate specific cognitive tasks. It can identify patterns and optimize decisions, but it does not ‘feel’ or ‘relate.’ AI’s strength lies in logic and speed; EQ thrives in connection and understanding.
What is EQ in AI?
‘EQ in AI’ is not about machines developing genuine empathy, but rather about integrating emotional awareness into AI systems, often through affective computing. This means training AI to detect emotional cues via voice, text, or facial expression and respond in ways that simulate empathy. In customer service, for example, AI might recognize frustration in a user’s tone and adjust its language to appear more supportive. However, this is not true empathy, but a programmed response modeled after it. The goal is to make AI interactions more human-centered and emotionally aware, even if they aren’t emotionally intelligent.
EI Powered by MPS, a Brandon Hall Group Smartchoice® Preferred Provider, recognizes these challenges. With over 30 years of learning design experience, EI integrates emotional intelligence and AI through frameworks like their Learning and Performance Ecosystem and the LITMUS Framework. These holistic approaches ensure that learning initiatives achieve desired outcomes for individuals and businesses.
Human-centered emotional intelligence combined with the scale of AI creates a powerful learning formula. But most organizations lack the in-house resources or capabilities to execute this combination effectively. That’s where trusted partners like EI Powered by MPS come in.
Want the full picture on emotional intelligence in the age of AI? Access the exclusive research brief from Brandon Hall Group™ and EI Powered by MPS. Discover why emotional intelligence is moving from ‘nice-to-have’ to business necessity as AI transforms our workplaces. Get actionable insights to foster emotionally intelligent learning in your organization.
