‘AI Could Have Feelings’: Godfather Of AI, Geoffrey Hinton, On The Emotional Side of AI

Geoffrey Hinton, also known as the Godfather of AI who recently left Google thinks that AI has or will soon have emotions.

While delivering a talk at King’s College in London, Hinton said, “I think they could well have feelings. They won’t have pain the way you do unless we wanted, but things like frustration and anger, I don’t see why they shouldn’t have those.”

Hinton's thoughts were centred on a concept of feelings that refers to hypothetical actions (I feel like hitting someone in the nose) to convey an emotional state. This is something that AI systems are already capable of.

In May this year, Hinton made headlines as he left Google after a decade-long affiliation with the search engine. While quitting, he had said, “I left so that I could talk about the dangers of AI without considering how this impacts Google.”