Abstract: While artificial intelligence emotion(AIE) emerges as a product of technological advancement,it simultaneously reflects the modernity issue of excessive instrumental rationality.When the tentacles of instrumental rationalism extend into the realm of emotion,AIE comes into being.Primarily aimed at emotionalizing technology,AIE inevitably makes emotion technological,manifesting in three key aspects:functional utility obscuring emotional essence,algorithms dominating emotional interactions,and technological objects enslaving emotional subjects.Under technological control,emotion is reduced to mere means and instruments.AIE harbors the transgression and proliferation of instrumental rationality:under the dominance of efficiency-first thinking,emotions gradually lose their heterogeneity and trend toward homogenization;influenced by computational control logic,emotional relationships can be manipulated;guided by abstract reductionism,intelligent machines as objects exhibit a subject tendency.To recalibrate the excessive instrumental rationality in AIE,it is essential to simultaneously deepen reflections on "why to achieve" and "how to achieve",including reevaluating technological values,prioritizing emotional experiences,and reconstructing emotional significance.AIE highlights the tension between technology and humanism,necessitating continuous exploration of balanced integration between instrumental and value rationality.Achieving a humanistic turn in technology rather than allowing technology to exert new control over humanism remains an urgent challenge for both present and future endeavors.

Key words: artificial intelligence (AI), emotion, instrumental rationality, modernity, alienation