Why would an AI overlord want to give their robot citizens emotion?
In my world, a hyper-intelligent AI has struck out on their own to form a perfect, mechanized empire, populated by loyal robot citizens, devoted to the overlord as a child would be devoted to their parent.
Of course, most robots are emotionless machines, but these citizens have humanlike emotions. What reasons would the overlord have for creating them this way?
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I wasn't sure about making this an answer, but @Alexander convinced me.
Your AI may be hyper-intelligent, but it lacks the creativity to construct an entire civilizational structure from scratch. So it models its "perfect empire" on human societies, with the necessary changes to make it "perfect" as per the AI's judgement, but the final result retains some of the quirks and foibles of human society that a robot society wouldn't need.
Emotions would be one such quirk. Robots don't need emotions, but every civilization in history has had citizens with emotions, so as far as the AI understands, emotions are an integral part of any civilization. And so it ensures its own citizens have emotions.
This answer is inspired by NieR: Automata, where a significant plot point is that the machine lifeforms have begun copying the behaviours (and eventually, the appearances) of mankind, including forming rudimentary societies, but don't seem to truly understand the behaviours they're copying.
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