Future AI may hallucinate and get depressed -- just like the rest of us

Scientists believe the introduction of a hormone-like system, such as the one found in the human brain, could give AI the ability to reason and make decisions like people do. Recent research indicates human emotion, to a certain extent, is the byproduct of learning. And that means machines may have to risk depression or worse if they ever want to think or feel. Zachary Mainen, a neuroscientist at the Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown in Lisbon, speaking at the Canonical Computation in Brains and Machines symposium, discussed the implications of recent experiments to discover the effects serotonin has on decision making. According to Mainen and his team, serotonin may not be related to'mood' or emotional states such as happiness, but instead is a neuro-modulator designed to update and change learning parameters in the brain.