Why is that computer laughing?

Abstract

Will the artificial intelligences of the future learn to love? Will intelligent agents be able to understand and mimic human emotions? Will computer programs become more sensitive to their users' moods? These are a few of the questions, some serious, some not, that AI researchers are confronting as they seek to determine the place of emotions in their field. Researchers are studying the role of emotions in AI from a variety of viewpoints: to develop agents and robots that interact more gracefully with humans, to develop systems that use the analog of emotions to aid their own reasoning, or to create agents or robots that more closely model human emotional interactions and learning.