Do Large Language Models Have Emotions?
Do LLMs have emotions? A recent paper from Anthropic reports finding internal representations of emotion concepts in Claude Sonnet 4.5, concluding that the LLM has 'functional emotions.' We evaluate this claim against what is known about how emotions actually function in biological systems. We argue that emotions serve two core functions: the context-sensitive interpretation of situations, and the reorganization of processing across multiple systems in response to those interpretations. The Anthropic findings offer partial support for the first function, though the consistent, discrete emotional representations identified in Claude sit uneasily with affective neuroscience findings that hu...
| Authors | Amit Goldenberg, James J. Gross |
|---|---|
| Primary category | q-bio.NC |
| Published | 3 June 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 3 June 2026 |
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