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Theory of Mind: Are emotions needed for machines? By Aditya Abeysinghe Assessing the mental states of other humans is a task that humans have developed from late childhood. Emotions and social interactions are formed with understanding how others behave with a person. Theory of mind (ToM) describes this process of how mental states’ assessment affects the emotions humans make towards others. In my article on *Artificial General Intelligence, I described about how emotions are important for machines. For Artificial General Intelligence to be truly developed ToM is a key component. What is ToM? ToM in simple terms is the set of tasks the mind uses to think about the mental state of others. For example, assume that two people named James and Bred goes to a restaurant to have dinner. When James looks at the menu and tells that he will order some type of Noodles, Bred can infer that ...