Do robots have feelings?

Asked exactly: In the future, would they program the machines so accurately that they can make us think they have feelings?
Carlos Balaguer, from RoboticsLab, Universidad Carlos III from Madrid

If the robot-human interaction is long and narrow, we can hardly believe that the robot has "human" feelings. The designers and programmers of the robots are equipping them with advanced systems of interaction such as natural speech, gestural communication, memorization of situations, places, people, etc. Algorithms that emulate different human emotions such as sadness, joy, fear, etc. are also being developed. For this emulation to be effective, our own behavior is being modeled by learning from disciplines as diverse as sociology, psychology, etc. However, the results leave much to be desired in an in-depth interaction. In short, if the human-robot interaction is complete, the answer to the question is NO.

There are, however, important nuances. Currently, and possibly in the near future, androids robots are developing that has an identical appearance to ourselves: same face, same hair, same clothes, same voice. That is, from the physical point of view, they are cloning us (see the photo of the works of Prof. Hiroshi Ishiguro of Osaka University). The robot, called Geminoid, is also equipped with a system of imitation gesture, especially the expression of the face, which perfectly transmits the different moods, which are also accompanied by a proper gesture, a whole chord, etc. . The behavior of the robot is so real that outside observers come to believe, at some point, that they are dealing with real people.

This creates the so-called Uncanny Vally syndrome (sinister valley) that causes people to be frightened by the possibility that they can be cloned by some superior force. As Sigmund Freud said in 1919 in his work Uncanny, "To evoke easily the sinister one must let the person doubt if a certain figure that is presented is a person or an automaton." This gives rise to a new lonea of ​​current investogacion denominated "Robots sintienetes". For all this, if the human-robot interaction is short and not very close, the answer to the question would be YES.