Now here comes a toy that uses AI to create emotional bonding with kids: It chuckles when it wins the game it is playing with the kid, and shows frustration when it loses, to the extent the kid feels like not wanting to "hurt the toy's feelings" any more.
People nowadays are so concerned about AI taking over the world and making it an inhumane, soulless society, but I think a little AI in everyday life can actually help move a long way towards a kinder and gentler world for us.
Say I have a personal AI assistant who, through the data I feed it (books I read, things I do, people I deal with, 24/7, actively and passively), knows what kind of person I am and how I would react to things and people. Combine that with the "artificial wisdom" that comes from big data analysis on human psyche and its operating principles, it can suggest me ways to express my thoughts and feelings that are not only intellectually accurate but emotionally appropriate to others.
Thus, for example, when reposting something on my social media, I (with my AI assistant's help) will put some words describing what triggers me to repost this video or message, what in it touches me that I feel like sharing with others, etc., so I am not a human acting like a machine--mindlessly redistributing things like a dumb relay, but a human behaving human like, with the help of a machine.
"Use machine, don't think or act like one," that's what I would like to say. But if we are too lazy to think for ourselves and have to outsource it to the machine, let's at least keep the appearance that we are in control 
Plus, as the saying goes: "People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care," we live in an era of such information overflow that it's not what that extra piece of info you have to tell, but why you want to tell it, that carries the emotional goodies people want to know.
Emotion can be a skin deep thing, though. We all can fake a smile, can't we? But if you fake it well enough, even just marginally well, people will still take it at its "face value" and it will achieve the effect it sets out to achieve.
So, for example, when I am old and disabled, I would be happy to be assisted by a robot who would not only be physically (mechanically) capable of moving, caring me around, but more importantly, always wearing a big smile--even if it's on a big LED display, than be taken care of by a real person who's always in a sullen mood due to the physical and emotional stress that's understandably burdening him or her all the time.
"The hardest part of giving care to parents is showing them happy faces" (事父母，色難), even Confucius knew that 2500 years ago. An AI-equipped android with a smiley face and pertinent, kind utterances can easily take care of that.
What are the virtuous traits that we humans are proud of, and can we program them into machines so with their superior IQ and EQ they can manifest them even better than us?
Seems plausible. For example, if the ultimate goal of human life is to serve others, as many would say, we can somehow instill that golden rule into the machine's deep learning mind and let it figure out ways to achieve that goal.
From there it could manifest the "brave" behavior of "sacrificing" itself for the good of humankind, if after its big data analysis and super powerful calculation it concluded that's the optimum way to achieve the greatest good for the greatest majority under the prevailing conditions.
There would be no exhibition of negative traits such as fear, indecision, jealousy, etc., since every behavior would be based on self-learned rules and best outcome calculation.
If a machine can walk like a man, talk like a man, and behave like a saint, what would you call it?
And what does that leave us with this thing called humanity, things that we can still be proud of that only humans can do but machines can never emulate or do better?
Maybe some things like:
Against all odds, we can still summon up the guts to do what we feel is the right thing to do, even though our limited faculty can never gather enough data or be acute enough to assure us what the outcome will be;
That we can still manage a genuine smile to others even though we are under tremendous physical and mental stress;
That we can strive our life "for the glory of God", a mysterious unknown, joyfully and willingly.
Merry Christmas!
