Emotions

After reading the Woodward piece I only have one way to respond. I don’t buy into all this talk about computers and machines and robots having feelings is absurd to me. They are not real living things therefore they cannot have feelings. I don’t think that computers will eventually be able to show emotion and exhibit feelings and all that accompanies those two. Yes humans might be able to program machines to show the concepts of emotions but for computers to actually feel on their own and create their own emotions seems impossible to me. I feel that emotions are things that people know innately and just experience them in whatever experience causes them to show up. I think that for a computer to have the understanding of emotions there would have to be too much human involvement and programming which then changes the nature of what the emotions really are.

Additionally I personally don’t want machines that display emotions. Do I want a computer that is going to say “I’m having a horrible day” and get all sad and depressed on me. NO! If I wanted that I am sure I could find a friend that was having a bad day and could provide the emotion for me. Also I don’t want computers or machines that make up their own minds on what to do because they have their own emotions and feelings for the situation at hand. Do I want a car that is going to stop because the road ahead is too high and scary or too dangerous. NO! I want a car that gets me from point a to point b and wherever else I want to go without questions. Having a car that had its own emotions would be like having a backseat driver in control of the car and nobody wants that. I think this whole idea of emotions and computers is absurd and dread the fact that there are people who actually want things like this to exist. All I can think of when I think about computers that have feelings is that Disney Channel movie “Smart House” where the house has a computer that can do anything in the house. Eventually the house goes crazy and tries to take over the life of the family and the family stops it because the computer is not real and cannot provide the same things as a real person. In the movie the parents protect the kids when the house is going crazy and that is something that a computer just can’t do. Although this is just a movie, I think that it illustrates perfectly the way I feel about the whole idea of machines and computers with emotions.