Artificial Intelligence and Natural Emotion

                                                 

Aylin was very excited to go on a trip with her robotics club today. Early in the morning she got up, put on the clothes she had chosen yesterday, washed her hands and face, and came to the kitchen with the bag she had prepared yesterday.


"Good morning, Aylin, are you ready for today's trip?"

"Good morning mum, yes I am ready! I took my camera, notebook and pens."

"Good for you, I prepared sandwiches and fruit juice for you, take these too."

"Thank you. Oh, shuttle is already here! Bye mum!"

Before her mother could say "Goodbye, my daughter", Aylin had taken off like a rocket.


Aylin was confronted by her friend Can and Zehra. She sat between them. Along the way, they talked about their homework that they will complete in robotic club at the end of the term, artificial intelligence and of course

robot they would see on the trip today. On today's trip, the children would meet the world's first humanoid robot equipped with advanced artificial intelligence. Aylin had been preparing the questions she would ask the robot for a month.


She chose three questions:
• Are you getting hungry? What do you think about food?
• What is your favorite color? Why?
• What do you think about human emotions?

Aylin, who was chatting with her friends, realized that they had arrived when the shuttle stopped. Three friends got excitedly off and followed Teacher Leyla. Before meeting the robot,

they visited the whole factory. A dog-like robot that jumps, a robot that closes the lids of toothpaste produced to work in the toothpaste factory, a robot that lifts the parcels produced to work in the warehouses to high places and many more... After introducing all the other robots to the children, the attendant brought the whole class to the door of a separate room and stopped.


"All right, kids! I'm sure you're very excited. There is the world's most advanced humanoid robot behind this door. You can talk to him, ask him questions. But, please keep your distance and do not touch him, okay?" he gave necessary information and the door opened.

He really looked like a human! He was sitting in a single armchair, and there are

cushions for the children to sit on a few meters across. There was tape in between for safety precautions. The children quickly crowded into the room. Although they jostled a bit to sit on the cushions at the front, Teacher Leyla had organized her class and everyone found their seats. Aylin was one of the lucky ones sitting in the front. She opened her notebook in front of her, wrote down the questions asked by her friends and recorded what the robot said.

"How do you approach people who are afraid of robots?"

"I try to answer your questions truthfully. Usually, once they get to know me, their fear goes away."

"How do you learn new things?"

"I learn with a system called an artificial neural network. Sometimes I learn from where I am when the update is made, sometimes I have to go home, that is, to the laboratory to learn."

At the end of many questions, there was a small silence. Taking advantage of this, Aylin immediately jumped in.

"So, what do you think about human emotions?"

The robot became silent, thought for a while and gave an answer that no one expected.

"Human emotions make you weak. To love, to be loved, to be admired... Humans always

think them. But they don't think about fear, doubt, disappointment. Why should I carry these negativities in my memory? These are the problems that harm people the most, it seems wrong to expect this in another form of life."

Aylin was a little surprised and a little disappointed by the answer she heard. She did not expect such a negative answer from the robot. She was deep in thought. She couldn't help but wonder what it would be like if we didn't have emotions in life and only had intelligence. And she could not control herself and she asked her friends on the way back.

"It would be very bad, of course! Think about it, you always eat the same thing, you never crave anything! I honestly couldn't live like that." Can said.

"Actually, it wouldn't be bad, but we would eat to stay healthy.

There would be no diseases caused by nutrition." Zehra said.

"But there would be no cultural flavors this time." Can protested.

"But what you call flavor is not a need, it's related to pleasure. Anyway, intelligence system decides whether it is useful or harmful. If it is an emotion, it evaluates whether it is pleasure or pain." Zahra explained.

"Ouch! If we don't have feelings, what would be the difference between robots and us? Aren't there anything in life that both useful and pleasurable?" Can stood up.

"What happened, kids? Did you also get stuck on what the robot said?" asked Leyla

The teacher came to them.

"Yes, teacher. I was thinking if we only have intelligence in life, but not emotions.

Would it really be better if it wasn't?" asked Aylin quietly.

"Is that possible? Look, for example, when we cut our hand, our body has to repair it. While repairing it, it starts to clot, right? It's a physical reaction, it's actually the body's way of protecting itself.”

Teacher Leyla gave an example.

"Yes, teacher, it's about the benefit." Zehra said looking at Can.

"Yes Zehra. But it hurts when we touch our hand, doesn't it? Because it hurts, we don't use that hand while doing work. What if it didn't hurt? Then we would use that hand even though our hand was sore, maybe it would get infected and our hand would be even worse, right?"

"Hmmm... I think I understand, teacher. I mean, in order for us to get benefit, we need emotions. We need it," Zehra said.

"Exactly. We need a sense of trust in order to get benefit from our relationships. When there is mutual trust, we also have love and respect for each other, don't we? If we were to evaluate our relationships only in terms of benefits and harms, then we would communicate with others for our own benefit. We had close relationships, friendships, we wouldn't even have a bond of love." Teacher Leyla explained.

"Right! So, we are friends because we have feelings, Zehra!" Can turned to Zehra.

"Okay, okay... This time you were right. Emotions are also indispensable in life." Zehra said.

"We have both reason and emotions, thank God, how lucky we are!" Aylin said and became happy.