I don't know whether a robot could, in principle have emotions. I think it probably could but what is absolutely certain is that the robot unveiled this week by the University of Hertfordshire has none. It has no feelings, no consciousness, and there's no there there at all. So why does the publicity, even in our own dear paper, pretend that it does?

"First robot able to develop and show emotions is unveiled" says our standfirst. "Nao, developed by a European research team, models the first years of life and can form bonds with the people he meets." Anyone who's seen or interacted with a one-year-old human being might doubt that.

Nao has no emotions, and so cannot develop any. If you look at the video in which it is supposed to be showing them through a set of postures, they might just as well be miming the actions of a man getting incompetently dressed while half-asleep.

There's "anger": the mime putting on a pair of baggy trousers; "anger": the mime has discovered half way through putting it on, that its shirt is inside out, and is trying to pull it the right way round; "sadness", in which it examines another pair of trousers to check they're not back to front, and so on.

Then we see Alok Jha patting its head in an effort to get the arms to move. Finally it adopts a zombie pose, arms straight ahead. Is this some new emotion? No. An emotion is an inner state. This robot has none. You might as well ask whether an Elizabot has had a new idea.

There's nothing new in pretending that inanimate objects have a life. Children do it all the time with dolls, or even "action figures" as boys' dolls are called. What is strange is that adults should be doing it, and that it should be happening in a culture that calls itself scientific and sceptical. People who would point and jeer at the idea of a weeping Madonna see nothing particularly odd in a video where we pretend that a robot has emotions.

But, actually, mistaking a robot for an emotional being is much worse mistake than supposing that a statue of the Madonna, or even a pet rock, can care about the world. In the case of the pet rock, the pretence is obvious. We are grafting emotion onto something that cannot feel at all. In the case of Nao, we are deliberately mistaking the simulacrum for the real thing; and that's a rather deeper confusion.

When this mistake is made the other way round – and we suppose that other people don't really have feelings at all even though they seem to act them well – its enormity is obvious. We give it names ranging from sociopathy to emotional fuckwittery and sin. We know it makes society impossible. So why play with the notion at all?

One rather Marxist explanation is that the modern economy is built on treating other people as if they were in fact machines. I suppose it originated in army drill in the 17th century, where the appalling, unnatural demands of standing up to artillery bombardment demanded men who could stand and march like robots. But it has certainly spread through factory work and now to the relentlessly scripted service drones who fill call centres, wish us nice days, and assure us that our business is important. To pretend about artificial intelligence is a way of ignoring the widespread reality of artificial stupidity.