Can AI ‘feel’ guilt?

Description

Some sci-fi scenarios depict robots as cold-hearted clankers eager to manipulate human stooges. But that’s not the only possible path for artificial intelligence.

Humans have evolved emotions like anger, sadness and gratitude to help us think, interact and build mutual trust. Advanced AI could do the same. In populations of simple software agents (like characters in “The Sims” but much, much simpler), having guilt as a stable strategy that benefits them and increases cooperation, researchers report July 30 in Journal of the Royal Society Interface.