In these studies, researchers asked OpenAI’s ChatGPT to generate written responses to posts on Reddit about physical and mental health struggles. Next, they compared the chatbot’s responses with those of human doctors and therapists responding to the same Reddit posts. Across these studies, the chatbot’s responses were rated as more empathetic than those of the human doctors and therapists.

Or consider a recent paper claiming that AI can produce more novel ideas than human experts. In this case, the researchers asked computer science PhD students and postdocs to compete with a modified version of Anthropic’s Claude AI model. Their task: to come up with new research ideas. Each competitor was assigned a research topic (such as how to reduce bias in AI systems) and a template for writing out their ideas (to mask stylistic differences between human and AI writing). All the ideas were then judged by another group of PhD students and postdocs, who didn’t know whether the ideas came from AI or humans. The judges rated the AI-generated ideas as more novel, and in some cases more exciting, than the human-generated ideas.

All that these examples of so-called “AI victories” show us is that machines are better than humans at performing empathy, creativity and conflict resolution in machine-like ways. Considering why these tests are unfair helps us better appreciate our distinctively human talents. We build relationships thick with meaning and forge new knowledge out of trusting social bonds. We find common ground reflected in our faces, voices and postures, perhaps because embodied communication helps us recognize our shared mortality. No chatbot can achieve these feats, because chatbots don’t have bodies, and aren’t embedded in our social worlds the way our loved ones are.