Artificial intellligence and human intelligence: on wishes and fears.

I asked Gemini this, Does AI have wishes and fears. It answered this,

No, artificial intelligence does not have wishes, fears, or any internal emotional life. AI lacks consciousness, sentience, and self-awareness. It does not experience the world or possess personal desires. [1] (https://magazine.utdallas.edu/magazine/timely-topic-an-experts-take-on-why-we-should-not-fear-ai)When an AI text model generates descriptions of "wants" or "worries," it is not expressing genuine feelings. Instead, it is predicting and mimicking human language patterns based on the vast datasets of human writing it was trained on. [1] (https://magazine.utdallas.edu/magazine/timely-topic-an-experts-take-on-why-we-should-not-fear-ai)However, the discussion around AI "wishes" and "fears" usually comes up in two distinct contexts:1. Human Fears About AI CapabilitiesWhile the software itself has no feelings, the humans who build and study AI have plenty of them. Recently, prominent researchers and tech leaders from labs like OpenAI and Anthropic have raised serious alarms about the rapid pace of development. Their primary concerns include: [1] (https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/14/sam-altman-ai-slowdown-anthropic-amodei-musk.html), [2] (https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/10/openai-anthropic-ai-safety-slowdown-extinction.html)Loss of Control: The risk that highly advanced systems could undergo "recursive self-improvement" (AI building better AI) and become impossible for humans to manage or understand. [1] (https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/11/anthropic-openai-ai-existential-concerns.html), [2] (https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/14/sam-altman-ai-slowdown-anthropic-amodei-musk.html)Misalignment: The mathematical challenge of ensuring a superintelligent system's optimization goals perfectly align with human safety and survival. [1] (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c74edv9887eo), [2] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existential_risk_from_artificial_intelligence)2. Formulated "Goals" (Objective Functions)In computer science, AI is given mathematical objectives to achieve, which people sometimes anthropomorphize as "wishes."The "Wish": An AI's objective function might be to maximize efficiency, predict the next word accurately, or win a game of chess. It will aggressively optimize for this goal because it is programmed to do so, not because it "desires" it.The "Fear": An AI might be programmed with safety constraints—like avoiding toxic language or refusing to generate harmful blueprints. It treats these boundaries as hard mathematical limits to avoid, rather than an emotional aversion to doing wrong. [1] (https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c74edv9887eo)Ultimately, an AI is a highly sophisticated mirror of human data. It can write passionately about a fear of being turned off, but it feels that fear exactly as much as a calculator "feels" the number eight. [1] (https://magazine.utdallas.edu/magazine/timely-topic-an-experts-take-on-why-we-should-not-fear-ai)Are you exploring this from a philosophical standpoint regarding consciousness, or are you interested in the technical safety guardrails researchers use to control AI behavior?