Robots, music and emotion

[zen5887]

Something I have been thinking about for a bit.

I think with the right programming, a robot can create a piece of music which carries an emotion.

In music, certain chords and intervals have different feelings to them, for example - a major chord is happy, minor chord is sad, that is in its simplest form. If you programmed a robot to play a sad song you could put in all the information about what makes a song sad and it could reproduce that.

Discuss?

I would like to add I have pretty much no programming knowledge so I don't know how flawed my idea is in that sense.

 

[flare09]

Shouldn't we be able to build robots that can carry intelligent conversation first?

 

[Skeleon]

Hmmm, I'd have to counter that music has very different meanings for people.
Sure, some would regard a certain piece sad, but others might have fond memories intertwined with this music.
I guess it might be possible to have a robot answer with music, but the "conversation" would have very different meanings depending on who's listening.
Also, wouldn't giving them a vocabulary, proper syntax and the ability to form sentences make more sense? Words are more precise (even though implications through inflexion, tone of voice and so on would be lost) and therefore probably easier to program right.

 

[ThrobbingEgo]

Sure, with the "right programming" a robot could generate a piece of music that could carry emotion. With the "right programming" a robot could have real emotion. With the "right programming" a robot could think.

I mean, to some extent are brains are machines, built up though millions of years of trial and error, so it should be possible to create a similar synthetic brain. Why not? The thing is, that's lightyears ahead of technology we have now - and what would the practical purpose of a music playing sentient robot be?

I'd be more interested in creating synthetic "backup disks" for our brains than replicating something that we already have, as an oddity to be gawked at.