Robots will never have emotions & feelings - Says Math. But Never Say Never!

Researchers have been trying to use mathematical models to determine how our brain creates consciousness, emotions and feelings for decades now. One of the latest model that makes an attempt at this has predicted that the machines will never have any of the distinct human characteristics viz. emotions and feelings. All this mathematical model is trying to say is that humans will continue to have the supreme status on the Earth for a comfortably long time and humanoids will continue to serve hot coffee without complaining.

Giulio Tononi, researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison says that the machines will have to possess the ability to integrate information to achieve consciousness. Since machines are not able to contextualise information, just like human brain does, they will never be able to have emotions. For example, if you are looking at a green rectangle; the brain doesn't break it down as a 'colorless shape' + 'shapeless green area'. Instead, our brain processes it as one entity; because we know the bigger picture.

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Researchers have demonstrated using mathematical models that the computers cannot have the ability to process the complex information at once. The consciousness, which is based on ability to process a lot of information along with the right context & experiences, thus cannot be achieved in machines. Professor Phil Maguire of the National University of Ireland explains this using XOR logic gate. The gate relies on predicting the output based on the combination of two inputs. He says that in order to get output, you have to input two bits and then one bit is obtained as output. If the brain worked in similar fashion, then it'd be continuously hemorrhaging information.

We're curious to know from our readers whether they agree or not. Do you think humans will finally be able to make the machines have emotions?

Source: Robots will NEVER have feelings, experts claim | Daily Mail Online

Replies

  • micheal john
    micheal john
    I agree😀
  • Sanyam Khurana
    Sanyam Khurana
    May be at this point of time it seems impossible to develop humanoids, but I'm sure, one day we'll have humanoids, at least the craze about Artificial Intelligence makes me feel so.
  • Rajni Jain
    Rajni Jain
    I disagree this statement as humans have already invented emotionally intelligent robot.
    ERWIN Is An Emotional Robot With Intelligent Network Developed By University of Lincoln is built by an Indian student in University of Lincoln.This robot has the ability to express five basic emotions while interacting with humans.And also an IIT Alumni built an Emotionally Intelligent Social Robot Built By An IIT Alumni
    We have already reached to this level and will surely develop a robot which will have emotions on its own.
  • cognitiveguy
    cognitiveguy
    Though appreciate the confidence and spirt in the comment, was a bit surprised by the statement. The matter has been highly controversial even from the time of Turing on the theoretical level and from days McCarthy on the applied level. Though I personally believe that (with my humble studies in cognitive science) that we can't rule out the possibility of humans creating AI, making a too hasty statement like above seems unrealistic. Can we dismiss the objections raised by great minds like Roger Penrose etc about AI so easily? Are we in a stage now to dismiss an objection based on Godelian argument etc so easily?. I doubt it. Even Searles' Chinese Room argument has very strong ground (as Penrose has pointed in his book Emperors New Mind). Though, I would like to side with Paul Churchland's objections against Searle, the argument is still strong in its merits.
    Unlike other fields of pure or applied sciences, AI has far more dimensions which has been pointed out by McCarthy long time back. Remember hsi paper date back to 50s. AI is far more than just applied Robotics. Remember that there were lot of tall claims (even decades ago) about achieving AI. So, it may be safe for us, not to do a hasty conclusion based on some advances in robotics. Even at the same time appreciating and admiring those advances, we need to be practical and realistic. This is true even in our age of IBM Deep Blue which has defeated Kasperov/Anand yeargs ago (based on the mix of heuristic and pruned out brute force computing), and the IBM Watson which has defeated all the human Jeopardy contestants a couple of years ago. Because, human consciousness is still an enigma. Let us be more humble about making tall claims. Can we create a robot which will pass a simple turing test now? (Not ignoring that the concept of Turing test itself is controversial and unsettled). Also, is there any consensus now about what is an 'emotion'? Do only humans posses emotions? This comment is not at all intended for discrediting the achievement of the engineering team, but just a caution about jumping into conclusions. (As a person who has done humble studies in cognitive science, I must say, I really appreciate the achievement), So, the gist of my comment is this, the topic is not that simple to conclude anything in a very simple way. So, let us be realistic.

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