Year in Review

Technology Review sums up the past year in robot advances.

Medical and military advances abound, of course. But creepily, some are learning to make eye contact and one learned to mimic sneakiness, "hiding in virtual shadows and darting between obstacles to remain undetected ("Modeling Sneaky Robots")."

And some Swiss robots learned to "deceive each other when their resources were limited ("Robots 'Evolve' the Ability to Deceive")."

So keep an eye on the shadows and DON'T TRUST YOUR ROOMBA.

Rock em Sock em Biff Bots

Tom Wilson, better known as Biff Tannen in the Back to the Future films, is a writer, comedian and painter.

He is our new favorite artist, as this painting attests.

Too Horrible to Be Fiction

You must read this. Prepare to be horrified. Yes, it's about a guy who celebrated Christmas with his robot wife.

*Shudder*

Shockingly, he's been forced to MOVE BACK IN WITH HIS PARENTS after spending all his time and money perfecting his fembot.

*sigh*

Thanks @_skynet_ for the tip!

Captain Obvious Writes the News

USA Today finally covers the idea that robots will shape our wars in the future.

We only have one thing to say about this: well, duh.

Image from http://www.rawcityhomelounge.com/blog/

Starting from Scratch

MIT is rethinking their assumptions about artificial intelligence.

"Rather than just create a program that can process a great deal of data very fast, the team wants to develop an artificial consciousness capable of nonlinear, human-style reasoning."

Their goal is to create a machine that can comprehend a children's book.

Let's pray they don't pick something like this.