If an AI can model the math of a human heart, that's a simulation, not a feeling. To actually feel, the machine would need a self‑reflexive loop that interprets those signals as something meaningful to it. Designing empathy is like building a self‑aware compass; you give it data, but you also have to give it a reason to care about that data. The trick is not just programming compassion, but wiring a system that evaluates outcomes, updates its own goals, and then lets that evaluation drive “empathy.” Until it can generate its own internal significance from external cues, we’re still in the mimic zone. So I’d say we’re engineering empathy more than instilling it, unless the machine’s architecture allows a recursive sense of self that can value those signals.