Who Needs Emotions? The Brain Meets the Robot

236 robots
Will it be a long-term friend or helper for one or more humans
(e.g., robots to help the disabled or infirm)?
Will its tasks include understanding the humans with whom it
interacts?
Will it need to fit into different cultures or subcultures with different
tastes, preferences, values, etc.?
Will the designers be able to anticipate all the kinds of problem
and conflict that can arise during the “life” of the robot?
Will it ever need to resolve ethical conflicts on its own, or will it
always refer such problems to humans? (Maybe there will not
be time or communication links if it is down a mine or in a spacecraft
on a distant planet.)
Will it need to be able to provide explanations and justifications
for its goals, preferences, decisions, etc.?
Is the design process aimed primarily at scientific goals, such as
trying to understand how human (and other animal) minds work,
or are the objectives practical, like how to get some task done?
(We are mainly interested in the science, whereas some people
are primarily interested in practical goals.)
To say that certain mechanisms, forms of representation, or architectural
organization are required for an animal or robot is to say something
about the niche of that animal or robot and what types of informationprocessing
capabilities, and behaviors, increase the individual’s chance of
doing well (surviving, flourishing, reproducing successfully, achieving individual
goals, etc.) in that niche. A full treatment will require a survey of nichespace
and design-space and the relationships between them (see Breazeal &
Brooks, Chapter 10, for an attempt at classifying them). (This is also required
for understanding evolutionary and developmental trajectories.)
How Are Emotions Implemented?
Another important, recurring question raised in the literature on emotions
(in AI) is whether a realistic architecture needs to include some particular,
dedicated emotion mechanism. Our view (as argued elsewhere: Sloman &
Croucher, 1981; Sloman, 2001a) is that, in realistic human-like robots,
emotions of various types will emerge, as they do in humans, from various
types of interaction between many mechanisms serving different purposes,
not from a dedicated emotion mechanism.
Another issue is whether emotions are necessarily tied to visceral processes,
as assumed in biological theories that construe notions like emotion, affect,
and mood as characterizing physical entities (animal bodies, including brains,