Can an AI have emotional intelligence?

There are always comments like „machines can’t have emotions“, „they’re never have feelings“ and so on. But what if they don’t have to?

What would happen when an AI just fakes emotions. What is when we’re not able anymore to decide between a persons reaction and an Als reaction? I mean does it really matter if an AI has real feelings when it could easily analyze millions of people and learn how to exactly fake emotions and feelings as good as real humans?

First I don’t see any problems coming with that. A few days ago I was visiting my grandma at the senior home. She showed me a seal made of plush which makes her very happy. This animal recognized when someone touched it, it also recalled voices and names, it moved like a real animal. It was some sort of robot and, even when just at the beginning, a little bit of AI.

This little guy cuddled with my grandma. The seal was going everywhere. Yes, my grandma really had some kind of feelings for her new pet that made her some company. And the nurse told me the one time the batteries were empty there was sadness.

We’re humans. We’re weak. We have emotions. We easily can be manipulated by our feelings. Example: Maybe there is calling the women you ever wanted to date via Skype but its just a perfect animated fake video, assembled from Instagram images of the lady of your dreams. It can blackmail you. Maybe it just wants to get access to your bank account.

And even scenarios like in the movie transcendence are no longer unlikely at this point, were an AI imitating a person and plays with feelings for, let’s say, the just passed away husband. The AI maybe wants to get on the computer, to remember the past, from there it goes through the internet on more and more computers, knows more and more, knows how people think, move, write, live and more. It can control us. It can use us to build something tremendous which is not that easy to destroy again. I don’t wanna to spoiler the movie more…

My point is: Of course we can say that an AI never could have real feelings. But this doesn’t matter. Because an AI, at least this is what I think, can use us with fake emotions. In the longer term future we maybe no longer able telling the difference between us and AI.

After all I can’t wait what AI is bringing to us. I want to see how our lives are changing. And I wanna be part of this change.