Question: does Janice have feelings

Enda O'Connell answered on 19 Nov 2012:

Hi Zackattack,

If you mean does Janus show human-like emotions, like happiness, sadness, boredom or pain, then the short answer is “No, Janus doesn’t have feelings”. There is a branch of science and technology, that is attempting to make intelligent machines, called “Artificial Intelligence” but I’m not an expert in the area, by any means. I do know that one of the tests these scientists use to determine whether a machine displays intelligence, is called the “Turing Test”. Put simply, a judge holds a conversation, asking questions (via a chat like the I’m a Scientist chat, so they can’t see or hear the participants) of a human and a machine, and if they can’t tell the difference between the two, the machine has passed the test.

If you are asking whether Janus can feel or sense her environment, then yes, she has a type of sense of touch. Unfortunately, this only become apparent when I do something wrong, such as forget to take the lid off a tube or plate, or leave something in her way. Because she doesn’t have any vision, she can crash into the obstacle, but she senses that she has touched off something unexpectedly and will stop and send me a message via the computer. I can either then remove the obstacle and continue the experiment or pause the stop the experiment, in case there has been any damage to Janus. Luckily, she is quite robust and doesn’t get damaged easily, and I try hard not to make any silly mistakes…