Ethical Treatment of Robots and the Hard Problem of Robot Emotions

Abstract

Emotions are important cognitive faculties that enable animals to behave intelligently in real time. The author argues that many important current and future applications of autonomous robots will require them to have a rich emotional repertoire, but this raises the question of whether it is possible for robots to experience their emotions consciously, as people do. Under what conditions would phenomenal experience of emotions be possible for robots? This is, in effect, the "hard problem" of robot emotions. This paper outlines a scientific approach to the question grounded in experimental neurophenomenology.