This book is a travel guide to the future. It is a scholarly reimagination of life in the age of artificial intelligence (AI)-powered technologies. It made my head hurt and my heart ache.

Automating empathy: decoding technologies that gauge intimate life starts with an initial chapter on “Automating Empathy.” Two hefty sections follow. Section 1 covers “Theory and Ethics” and consists of four chapters: “Hyperreal Emotion,” “Assessing the Physiognomic Critique,” “Hybrid Ethics,” and “The Context Imperative.” Section 2, “Applications and Implications,” has six chapters: “Positive Education,” “Automating Vulnerability: Sensing Interiors,” “Hybrid Work: Automated for the People?,” “Waveforms of Human Intention: Towards Everyday Neurophenomenology,” “Selling Emotions: Moral Limits of Intimate Data Markets,” and “Uncertainty for Good, Inverting Automated Empathy.” Travelers will want to keep their dictionary handy.

The book concludes with notes, references, and an index. The references contain a large slice of the work in the emerging field of emotional AI. Together the two sections form a confluence that brings clarity to the potential and perils of the speculative future ahead.

Time travelers should start with chapter 1, which jumps right into this future with a now familiar futuristic scenario, a detailed explanation of the emergence of automated empathy, and a description of the structure of the book.

Chapter 10 points out the moral questions travelers will see along the way. Reflect on these and on your own emotions as you move to the conclusion in chapter 11. It proposes an alternative future in which Dr. McStay illustrates how to “flip the switch,” so to speak, and co-create a more human-centric, technology-enabled life for all. It gave me new hope.

Travelers will want to learn more about international AI standards and trustworthy AI here [1]. Automating empathy is a tour de force. May the force be with you.