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Top2. Background Research
Living entities increase their range of possible interactions and behavior according to the complexity of their embedded information processing systems, which reached a maximum level with the emergence of central nervous systems and brains. Encephalization, adjusted by the Encephalization Quotient (EQ), was understood by first modern researchers on cognition as the capacity for running high level cognitive tasks, situating symbolic thinking at the top of the possible brain performances. Thus, intelligence, symbolic thought and encephalization were considered correlated variables. In this model, emotions had no space or role, but were even considered noisy or fuzzy elements that should be minimized or avoided. But the truth is that all these ideas were incorrect, at least in that naïve form: first of all, cognition not only happens into the brain, but there are morphological constraints that affect and direct cognition; secondly, extended cognitive processes are at the core of the cognition and make possible to understand how brains evolved towards the use of symbolic elements following auxiliary elements like external memories or graphical notations for better visualization; finally, emotions have demonstrated to play a determinant role into cognitive processes. This is valid for any cognitive system emerged from natural evolution, and consequently, for human beings.
But what does happen with artificial intelligence? Do machines have been reproducing this naturalistic approach? The answer is a rotund ‘no’. Despite of several biologically inspired strategies like genetic algorithms, a-life, biorobotics, evolutionary computation and electronics, swarm intelligence, artificial neural nets or cellular automata, among a long list (see the excellent compendium of Floreano and Mattiussi, 2008), the presence of emotions is close to zero. There is an exception: the environments in which machines must interact directly with human beings; only these contexts explain the existence of the affective computing and social robotics research fields.