Do robots have feelings?

[Mike]

Originally Posted by sciencenerd

When a robot can be presented with a situation that it has had no precedent of (or programming about), and, from the information it can gather, choose the best way to react to it, then it is sentient.

Ahh, now we are getting somewhere. I can't answer this with a little snippet of code. But rather this leads into another question. Are humans very complex programs? I say that we are programmed, but programmed to be learning creatures. If you were to place a baby in this situation, it would not know how to get the candy on the top shelf. However, place that same baby (now more of a toddler) in the room a few years later and I believe it would now know how to get that candy.

So, if I program a robot to learn, is it living? Programming a robot to learn is no easy task, to say the least. One (very very very inefficient idea) that I have is to approach it with a brute force attack, of sorts. Try every possible combination of using the chair until you find the one that works, then log that technique for use later.