Does the world need a major empathy upgrade? Minter Dial believes so. The highly acclaimed speaker and award-winning author says that while empathy can be perceived as weakness, it just may be the biggest untapped lever for productivity, customer loyalty, and long-term profitability.

But here’s where things get especially interesting: In Minter’s latest book, Heartificial Empathy: Putting Heart Into Business and Artificial Intelligence, Minter argues that injecting empathy into a machine can also be a game-changer for business, especially with customer-facing communications. And in seeking to reproduce our brain, he writes, AI will affect our behaviors, emotions, attention, and more. Are you ready for empathic machines?

In this episode of Beyond Profit, a podcast of the ANA Center for Brand Purpose, Minter joins host Ken Beaulieu to discuss why the world needs to invest in and cultivate empathy and the role artificial empathy can play in overcoming the threats in business and in society at large.