Do computers have their own personality and emotions?

Question

Today's modern PC can have become faster and more efficent in today's modern age. Computers now have to abiltiy to process information even when the computer is shut down. Do you suppose today's computers have a "limited" personality with emotions? Can our normal computers of today actually get mad at the user and do things back as a way to retaliate?

Answer 1

they are electrical. not emotional. you have seen too many movies

Answer 2

I agree with most of the other answers here: they definitely have a "personality", in the sense that a rickety old car might develop a "personality". Emotions govern how we act and respond to one another as humans, and at this point there is no artificial intelligence program I've heard of that can accurately and comprehensively recreate human-like emotional responses.

That said, though, I do believe that as AI research and development continues, it's almost inevitable that such a point may be reached. I don't know if you've seen or read "Chobits", but there may very well be a day when computers are humanoid machines which interact with "biological" humans just like we interact with each other, but possess the added logical, recollective, and communicative abilities of a computer.

Answer 3

No, not really. Some are junk and others work well. Just like the old saying, garbage in - garbage out, if you have good working hardware and the software "you" need then the computer will provide for your needs. Now, get enough bad sectors or lost clusters then your computer is going to start giving you a hard time...Keep it maintained and your computer will be as "happy" as you will be! Cheers....

Answer 4

If so then I think my computer must be suicidal because it has given up on life. =( Haha. Good theory though.

Answer 5

Computer Emotions and Mental Software*

Randolph M. Nesse
The University of Michigan
Whether computers can experience emotions or not is
murky matter that I will leave to others willing to brave the
darkness at the intersection of epistemology and consciousness.
Whether computers have special states that correspond functionaily
to emotions in organisms is, however, an important and
tractable question. Asking it in the light of evolutionary theory
can help us to understand the functions and dysfunctions of
human emotions.
To meet the challenges of different tasks, many machines
must assume different states, one corresponding to each task.
A combination telescope/microscope that has just been used to
examined an insect must be adjusted before it can focus on a
distant bird. A Swiss army knife that has just been used to open
a can must have blades folded in and out before it can whittle a
branch As computers developed, people quickly realized that
a general purpose calculating machine was not very useful.
Computers were, therefore, either built for one purpose (like
switching telephone calls) or were designed with the capacity
for taking on several states, each of which facilitated carrying
out a different task. It now seems natural to use one program
for word processing, another for drawing, another for doing
statistics, and yetanother for communicating. Each program
sets the input &vices, the processing and memory characteristics
of the machine, and the appearance of the screen, in
ways that facilitate carrying out a specific kind of task
Many of the benefits from the capacity to run different
programs come from concentrating limited processing capacity
on one task, but even infinite processing resources would not
make separate programs obsolete. If a screen displays a spreadsheet
grid, it cannot simultaneously provide a blank slate for
drawing. If a port is sending data to a printer, it cannot simultaneously
access the internet Each specialized task requires
different settings, if only because of the constraints of communication
with the operator and other devices.
The human mind is a product of natural selection that
controls physiology and behavior in ways that maximize the
individual’s inclusive Darwinian fitness. Individuals whose
brains are wired in ways that help them to cope effectively with
various threats and opportunities have a selective advantage,
while the genes of other individuals are gradually eliminated.
These threats and opportunities are somewhat consistent. Certain
situations that contain substantial fitness challenges have
occurred so often in the course of evolution that natural selection
has shaped specialized states that adjust various aspects of the
organism to cope especially well with these challenges.
*Direct correspondence to Dr. Randolph M. Nesse, The
University of Michigan C-440 Med-Inn Bldg., Ann Arbor, MI
48109-0840 (e-mail [e-mail]).
Some of these states are routine. Lack of nutrition arouses
hunger, excess heat, sweating; cold, shivering; and tissue damage,
pain Other states ate more complex and involve a whole
suite of adaptations; we call these states emotions. For instance,
attack by a predator arouses the emotion of panic. In this state
rapid heart beat, sweating, and fast breathing facilitate flight,
aversive anxiety motivates the wish to flee, and cognitive preoccupation
with escape plots a route. After successful escape,
specialized learning motivates avoidance of the situation in
which the attack took place.
While escape from a predator is an exemplar for anxiety,
we humans have faced many other dangers, some of. which have
shaped other subtypes of anxiety. A potential loss of status or
friends arouses social anxiety. Stranger anxiety is useful, especially
for children. The dangers posed by wasps and snakes are
avoided, thanks to phobic fear. The dangers our children face
are mitigated by our fears for their safety. Internal wishes to do
something that violates a social or internal norm arouses a more
insidious anxiety that deters us from actions that would threaten
valuable relationships. Other situations have shaped aversive
emotions different from anxiety. Loss of a loved one causes
grief. A threat to a mate’s fidelity amuses sexual jealousy.
Efforts that are not paying off amuse frustration Lack of
opportunity causes boredom. The very aversiveness of these
emotions is part of their utility.
Fortunately, our ancestors also experienced opportunities,
so we also have capacities for positive emotions. Encountering
a food bonanza, finding a better shelter, winning a
competition, completing a task, having sex, watching a child
succeed-such events amuse positive feelings of joy, pride,
satisfaction and pleasure. Why do we have capacities for more
aversive than positive emotions? It is because our environment
has contained more kinds of threats than opportunities. There
are no neutral emotions because natural selection shaped special
states only to cope with threats or opportunities.
Our emotions are pleasurable or aversive, but a computer
has no preference for which program it runs. Why not? Leaving
aside the problem of self-awareness, the computer is fundamentally
different from the mind in that the computer only
carries out tasks specified by the designer, while the mind has
been shaped to carry out many specialized tasks in the service
of another larger goal, maximizing the individual’s inclusive
fitness. Computers cannot reproduce, so this saves them from
the competitions that cause most human pleasure and suffering.
It is conceivable, however, to imagine a computer that would
“prefer” some tasks to others. Imagine a computer with something
like a governor, a device that monitors the temperature of
ist CPU and balks when ever the excess workload might shorten
its lifespan If computers were shaped by selection for those
models with long life-spans, such a device might evolve and
might provide a crude analog of the aversive character of some
human emotions. Mom likely, however, no computer would
have such a characteristic. The decrement in performance at
crucial times would be unacceptable. Designers would demand
higher performance, despite the shortened life of the computer,
so the governor would be eliminated Sadly, this is exactly why
we humans and other organisms age and die. Our bodies could
be made to go on and on, but the competition for reproduction
shapes mechanisms that give slight advantages now, despite
inevitable costs later. There are no perfect machines, mechanical
or biological, just bundles of compromises.
This brings us to emotional disorders. If a variety of
different situations arouse emotions that adjust our minds and
bodies to cope with various challenges, then much emotional
discomfort is normal and useful. Thus, using drugs to interfere
with these bad feelings might well compromise the individual’s
ability to cope (although a signal detection analysis shows that
inexpensive emotions will often be amused by falste alarms,
even by a normal regulation system). Evolutionarily novel
circumstances can arouse emotions in situations where they are
useless or harmful Pornography, for instance, arouses desires
that make people dissatisfied with their daily lives, Riding in
an airplane arouses anxiety for many people, but the anxiety
does nothing to increase safety.
In my practice of psychiatry, patients often say, “My
emotions are so conflicted!” I used to think that there was some
single core to an individual’s emotions, some central truth that,
if discovered, would resolve such conflicts. Sometimes there
is. And people often experience distortions of their emotions
that psychotherapy can set straight. In many cases, however,
the original statement is exactly right--conflicting emotions are
being aroused simultaneously. She loves him, but also fears
him. He wants to make her happy, but becomes jealous whenever
she is with another man She wants the new job but she
also wants to continue the friendship with her coworker. He
experiences desire and guilt. She wants to live up to her ideals,
but she also would like to kill- the person who hurt her child.
Many such conflicts are exactly what they seem-differ- ferent
urges competing in our minds as we squirm and suffer
Sometimes such conflicts become so extreme that the whole
system crashes. Excess and conflicting demands cycle into an
positive feedback loop of arousal or a state of frozen despair.
Novel aspects of our environment are especially prone to push
the system into abnormal states. These states are mediated by
neurochemical changes, but those changes am, in many cases,
secondary man&stations of higher level conflicts Our minds
fail just as computers do because of software problems, hardware
problems, or complex interactions between the two.
While cybernetic ideas were first applied to psychiatric problems
decades ago, the link with evolution was not yet made.
Now that we have a rudimentary sense of what the emotions are
for and how they evolved, we have a new opportunity to better
understand emotions and emotional disorders.
REFERENCES
Marks, I.M. and R.M. Nesse (in press) “Fear and Fitness: An
Evolutionary Analysis of Anxiety Disorders.” Ethology and
Sociobiology.
R. M. Nesse / EMOTIONS AND SOFTWAREI 3 7
Nesse, R. M. (1990). “Evolutionary Explanations of Emotions.”
Human Nature 1(3):261-289.
Nesse, R. M. (1991). "Psychiatry and Sociobiology.” In M.
Maxwell, ed., The Sociobiological Imagination. S.U.N.Y.
Press.
Nesse, R M. (1987). “An Evolutionary Perspective on Panic
Disorder and Agoraphobia, Ethology and Sociobiology
8:735-835.
Williams, G.W. and R.M. Nesse, R. M. (1991). “The Dawn of
Darwinian Medicine.” Quart. Rev. Biol. 66( 1): l-22.

Answer 6

no it all about the a.i. in the computer and how its program trust me computers do not feel or act anyway unless program to

Answer 7

No but probably some day.

Answer 8

Based on how they function, one could argue that they have personality.
Emotions, No!

Answer 9

I doubt it

Answer 10

Personality, yes.

Emotions, no.