Can AI have emotions?

Abstract

Rapid progress has been made in recent years on technology for the analysis and recognition of human emotions using artificial intelligence (AI). As this technology is further developed and AI gains the ability to respond in appropriate ways based on the emotional information it reads from people, AI will behave in ways that are ever more indistinguishable from real people, and we may come to attribute emotions to them. But can AI actually have emotions? In this presentation, I will discuss whether it is possible for AI to have emotions, and if so, what those emotions would be like. To this end, I will compare theories of emotion currently proposed in psychology and philosophy, and discuss the role of embodiment in emotion. Also, I will examine what ethical considerations might be necessary if AI has emotions, or if we attribute emotions to them even if they lack them.