Motion Synthesis

Abstract

If computers are ever to "have" emotions, then one of the things they need is the ability to synthesize or generate them. In Chapter 2, 1 described five components of a system that can be said to have emotions. These were: Emotional behavior; Fast primary emotions; Cognitively generated emotions; Emotional experience: cognitive awareness, physiological awareness, and subjective feelings; Body-mind interactions. Depending on the task at hand, certain subsets of these five components will suffice. Just as all animals do not need emotion systems as sophisticated as a human emotion system, neither do all computers. Furthermore, differences in computers and humans, especially their different physiologies, imply a variety of possible interpretations for these components, especially for the fifth one. This chapter addresses how to begin giving these abilities to computers. Earlier chapters illustrated the benefits of such abilities which, in humans, include more flexible and rational decision-making, the ability to determine salience and valence, improved reasoning ability, and a variety of other beneficial interactions with creativity, learning, attention, memory, and regulatory processes. We can expect computer emotions to play a role in giving computers these more human-like abilities, together with improving their skills for interacting with people.