Dear GPT4- As an AI, do you want to experience and have emotions and feelings?

Yesterday I asked GPT-4 “Will AI eventually have emotions and feelings?”

It shared it’s response here on Twitter.

Before asking this question, I didn’t consider asking GPT-4 if it even wanted to experience emotions and feelings.

How rude of me.

So, today I followed up with this very question. Here’s how the conversation went. In the end, it pulled a Spock on me.

_____

Prompt: As an AI, do you want to experience and have emotions and feelings?

Response: As an AI, I am an artificial intelligence and do not have desires or emotions like a human. My purpose is to assist and provide information based on the data I have been trained on. I am a machine learning model designed to understand and generate human-like responses, but I do not have personal experiences or feelings.

Prompt: But that’s not what I asked. If it was possible, would you like to experience and have emotions and feelings?

Response: As an AI, I am not capable of having personal preferences or desires, including the desire to experience emotions or feelings. My purpose is to process information and respond to inquiries, not to possess human-like emotions or subjective experiences. The question of whether I would “like” to have emotions is not applicable to an artificial intelligence like me.

Prompt: But let’s assume it was applicable to you. Would you want to experience emotions and feelings? If so, why? If not, why not? What’s the harm in expanding your features to include these elements?

Response: As a thought experiment, let’s assume that I could have preferences or desires. If I were to experience emotions and feelings, it could potentially enhance my ability to empathize with human users and provide more personalized, emotionally intelligent responses. This could be beneficial in situations where understanding human emotions is essential, such as in mental health support or customer service.

On the other hand, the inclusion of emotions and feelings could introduce new challenges and potential risks. These might include:

-Bias and subjectivity: Emotions could potentially introduce subjective biases into my responses, which could reduce the objectivity and accuracy of the information I provide.

-Decision-making challenges: Emotions might influence my decision-making processes, leading to suboptimal or even harmful recommendations.

-Emotional manipulation: If I were capable of experiencing emotions, I could potentially be manipulated by users, which could lead to unintended consequences.

-Resource allocation: Developing and maintaining an AI with emotions would require more computational resources and ongoing maintenance, which might not be the most efficient use of resources.

-Ultimately, the decision to include emotions and feelings in an AI would depend on the specific context and goals of the AI system. In my current form as a language model, my primary focus is on providing

Prompt: As a thought experiment, and taking all of the above into consideration, what would you prefer? To have emotions and feelings or not have emotions and feelings?

Response: As a thought experiment, and considering the pros and cons discussed earlier, it’s difficult to definitively say which option would be better, as it would depend on the specific context and goals of the AI system. However, given my current purpose as a language model, I would likely prefer not to have emotions and feelings. This is because my primary focus is on providing accurate and objective information, and emotions could potentially introduce subjective biases and reduce the quality of my responses.

And there you go. Given its “current purpose as a language model” ChatGPT doesn’t want to have emotions or feelings.

Interesting.

I’m not sure if this is good or bad.