Emotions are not a requirement for strong AI. I frankly would not waste any time with them. I just need an AI that can learn and solve problems at the human level.

I'm not naive enough to think that it can be solved in a short time. I do think that it is worth it for a person to spend the rest of their life working on it. There is just nothing more exciting than AI in my opinion.

Just imagine the possibilities...

"Narrow" AI is already here: search, banking, insurance, internet ads, crime prediction, Siri, plane autopilot (autotakeoff/landing too), autoparking, driver assist, on and on.

(At Trimble, we had fully autonomous tractor PoC in 2001)

"Deep" AI (self-directed / human-interactive) will take more time and effort, and can have (simulated) emotions if so programmed; the determinate is how to sell such as a viable product or service that doesn't freak people out too much or do something stupid like place untrustworthy systems in charge of live nuclear missiles.

Deep AI already started with deep learning, which improves exponentially every year, if you look at the performances. It already freaks me out that you can put together cheap drones+guns+self driving+better-than-human level face detection. Imagine controlling a drone botnet...