An AI-Generated Will To Survive May Make Robots Smarter

JL Tom Siegfried reports in Science News: In real life robots have no more feelings than a rock submerged in novocaine. There might be a way, though, to give robots feelings: build the robot with the ability to sense peril to its own existence. It would then have to develop feelings to guide the behaviors needed to ensure its own survival. This calls for machines designed to observe the biological principle that life must regulate itself to remain within a narrow range of suitable conditions -- like keeping temperature and chemical balances within the limits of viability. An intelligent machine's awareness of analogous features of its state would amount to the robotic version of feelings.