>What if the main thing that holds us back is the reliance on cost functions? ... why don't we try modelling emotions as the basic building blocks that drive th

>What if the main thing that holds us back is the reliance on cost functions? ... why don't we try modelling emotions as the basic building blocks that drive the AI forward? There are theories that intelligence comes about from relatively simple processes that generate complex structures. If we can model these simple processes and throw increasing amounts of computing power at it, perhaps we can actually get to something we agree is intelligent. This is largely done through cost functions: directing the structure to a sensible direction when we can. Now, I think this approach may very well be a dead end on the road to general AI. At the least, I think we're nowhere near it in our current direction. But it's taking us in interesting directions. Now, what is emotion? My impression is emotion is potentially far more complex, abstract, and ill-defined than intelligence. At the least, we see it from a super biased perspective because our brain is good at lying to us. Much like we never really see our own nose even though we're ALWAYS looking right at it, maybe our brain is really good at hiding emotions. Like an old friend of mine who was probably clinically depressed but didn't realize it for months. This is why I think modeling emotions would be really difficult. My guess is whenever we figure out intelligence (50 years from now?) it will be much easier to figure out how emotion can come out of that intelligence. Maybe it will even be emergent - for example, the AI is smart enough to realize something is wrong, so it feels fear. It realizes things are going well for it, so it is happy. Etc.