Will Robots Ever Cry?

Bots are cruel and heartless, following cold hard logic. But can they ever be programmed to understand emotion, feelings and other sentimental stuff? Let’s find out...

In 1837 Charles Babbage came up with the Analytical Engine, essentially the first machine design that laid claim to include all the elements of a modern computer. Back then Babbage’s machine was designed to compute, crunch numbers and perform calculations. Today the landscape of modern computing has undergone a paradigm shift. Sure, we have computers that are fast and mean machines designed purely for number crunching, but now they can do so much more.

Traditionally the dividing line between a human and a computer has always been the ability of the former to process information to adapt and learn. But artificial intelligence, built on the bedrock of Turing’s and Von Neumann’s work, can now simulate human behaviour in not only absorbing, storing and even making sense of information. This ability to learn has allowed machines to be adept at image recognition, speech and text recognition and even games like Chess and Go. But a question that has been plaguing scientists and futurists alike for sometime is: Can machines understand emotion?

Machine learning: Artificial Neural Networks