A Fear Response Can Have Some Unexpected Benefits

Most of us would just as soon not be afraid, but our natural fear response can have some unexpected benefits. This point is made salient by recent scientific efforts to program fear responses into artificial intelligence. While this might seem like an odd thing to do, programmers saw this as a helpful component to teaching…

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Emotion in an Artificial Intelligence World

It is an almost omnipresent fear these days that technology is degrading human connections, but could we leverage that same technology to foster closer emotional ties? We already have enough trouble reading each other’s emotions, and this becomes even harder when we communicate over long-distances, whether through email, phone calls, or even video chat. We…

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Can We Learn Empathy from Robots?

Many people familiar with science fiction tend to have an ingrained fear and repulsion at what are seen as cold and unfeeling robots. The idea of widespread artificial intelligence brings to mind terrifying visions from films such as The Terminator or The Matrix, both of which present an apocalyptic future where artificial intelligence turns on…

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