Do machines need emotions to be “really intelligent”? Our best reference for an AGI (human brains) points in that direction.

If so, how on earth would one synthesize or encode “sadness” or “joy” for starters? 🤖?❤️

Join me and see how far we get! 🧵

Thx @AlejandroPiad, @svpino

I’ve worked on the topic of emotions + AI for a while now with the goal to “give the Tin Man” a heart.

I haven’t... yet :)

But I did learn a lot of “emotional engineering” along the way that you may find interesting or inspire you new RL approaches.

In this thread I’ll cover many elusive psycho-bio-neuroscientific concepts from a computational perspective. (Bear in mind I’m a computer scientist, so feedback from people in those fields is welcome!)

Ok, so firstly, HOW are emotions useful for us living things?...

Our behaviours are (very strongly) driven by emotional forces, often prevailing over our more "rational" processes.

They also spark and feed our learning, focusing it on our most intense emotional episodes ("that hurt, I'll avoid it; that was great, I want more").

Furthermore, when expressed externally, emotions also provide a primordial language that allows inter- and intraspecies communication. (Isn’t it fantastic how watching a nature documentary we can tell how animals feel from sounds and body language?)