Dave Gershgorn offers a wake-up call for those who seek to use Emotion AI, schemes that claim to be able to use artificial intelligence to automatically read people's internal emotions based on their facial expressions or other biological metrics, such as heart rate or skin conductivity. The psychological theory used as the foundation of this technology is from Paul Ekman's discredited work from the middle of the last century. Corporations using this tech in the hope that they can circumvent empathy, creating the false appearance of emotional authenticity by learning how to mimic genuine emotional connections. That's the same technique used by sociopaths. Companies with healthy professional cultures shouldn't be afraid of direct human-to-human contact with their customers. That's still the only way to really understand people's emotions. It takes time, but it's an investment that pays off with deep insights, and ends up increasing the satisfaction of everyone involved. Emotion AI is a scam. There's no way to do emotion work on the cheap.