• Question: Why don't robots have any feelings. Why were they created or made like that.

    Asked by anon-74270 on 1 May 2020.
    • Photo: K-Jo O'Flynn

      K-Jo O'Flynn answered on 1 May 2020:

      Well when robots were first made, they weren’t designed to be like human. They were designed to help humans and make things more productive and easier for us. As humans, we realise the way we move and the fact we have hands makes productivity a lot better compared to other animals. So I guess this is why humans have designed robots to look like us over time. Feelings is a very hard thing to create and doesn’t exist at the moment for robots (I think). However, being a robot with feelings would be very difficult due to society and how unhuman and unreal it would be compared to everyone else.

    • Photo: Rosina Simmons

      Rosina Simmons answered on 1 May 2020: last edited 1 May 2020 9:52 am

      We create robots to not have feelings; robots are machines that can do a very special activity that helps up. For example, holding heavy car parts on the car assembly line. A robot doesn’t need have feelings to do this, and actually having feelings for this would be bad… what if the robot “get out of the wrong side of the bed” that morning? What if it doesn’t want to work today, but hang out with its friends instead? It would be hard for us because it’s not doing the job we created it to do (it’ll stop cars being made) and the robot would feel overworked or unloved perhaps.

      To create a robot with feelings, it would mean understanding our own feelings which is really complicated! If you take a group of people and give them a really hairy tarantula spider… some of them will be interested and want to touch the spider, and others will stay away because they think it’s creepy, and some will be down-right scared of it and run away. Even here there’s a range of feelings for the same activity; give the same group of people the option to bungee jump off a bridge and their reactions will be different again. Imagine having to programme a robot with all these “options” to feel.. it’s very difficult! How would it know which one to feel? What if we gave it an adventurous personality – it’ll love to play with the spider or jump off a bridge. But what if it’s tired that day, or doesn’t feel like it? Do you programme it so it can feel tired, or lazy?

    • Photo: Leah Edwards

      Leah Edwards answered on 1 May 2020:

      Robots just do what they are programmed to do (e.g. move your arm, pick up that part, drop it in the box) so they are not conscious and don’t have thoughts. You want the robot to carry out it’s task the same way every time – it would be super annoying if the robot decided it didn’t feel like picking up any parts today!

      However, there are robots out there that can use cameras to pick up on people’s body language and sense emotions from their facial expressions. In places like Japan they use these robots in care homes to stop people getting lonely, and one day we might even see robots carrying out other jobs that humans do.

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