We live in an odd time where 'software' (well neural networks) can be far more empathetic than summed product of a corporation.

Company empathy does exist, just look at how easy or hard it is to reach a company when you have a problem. How do they try to solve it for you? Is it a brick wall, for example Google when you have a problem. People quite often like dealing with small businesses because they can reach a singular human and have them as an interface to the problems they face now and in the future.

Agentic loops and the models underneath them can have a simulacra of empathy too. Not every model just blindly agrees with users, and some have a much better depth in picking up context clues that the user on the other end is having a hard time. Businesses just typically aren't running more expensive and fragile systems like that though.

Well, companies and AI are both entities that can make decisions and take actions that involve humans. Those might be empathetic or they might not. So of course you can compare their levels of empathy. I don't really understand why you think that you wouldn't be able to.

For example, health insurance providers are renowned for not being empathetic. Charities are the opposite. Sometimes companies even build it into their identity, e.g. Cards Against Humanity.

As for AI, I haven't seen a strong difference in empathy but it's definitely true that the big AI companies at least try to make their models moral and empathetic. Even if it mostly ends up just being annoying.