Are you afraid of Artificial Intelligence? — A conversation with the neuroscientist Mariana Verzaro — Part 2

In my previous article, I’ve started to share a series of interviews I’ve been taking with Mariana Verzaro, doctoring in Neurosciences from the University of Sāo Paulo about Artificial Intelligence and so much more.

Today, in the second part of this conversation, we’ve started to discuss some primordial feelings like joy, anger, sadness, and fear. And this last feeling caught my attention to open a more in-depth discussion with one initial question: what is fear? How does it work on our brains? And more importantly, how can we understand this feeling when talking about Artificial Intelligence?

When asked about fear of Artificial Intelligence, Mariana came out with a scientific approach: “ I would begin studying fear, which is an emotion with a lot of studies, the fly and fight response could be the first step. Create a machine that fears something; that´s where I would begin. Empathy is a combination of feeling, so we have to start replicating each emotion separately and then combining them. Programing the memories could be hard, though, but I would start from that.” I think we have a good starting point here.

Anyway, fear of Artificial Intelligence is a big thing. Technology can be a downright scary topic…