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Hat Tip: Dorothy Adams Robot IQ Test A GUY GOES INTO A BAR IN NEW YORK WHERE ALL THE BARTENDERS ARE ROBOTS. THE GUY SITS DOWN AT THE BAR AND THE ROBOT ASKS: WHAT WILL YOU HAVE? THE GUY REPLIES, WHISKEY. THE ROBOT BRINGS BACK HIS DRINK AND ASKS, WHAT'S YOUR IQ? THE GUY SAYS, 168 THE ROBOT TALKS ABOUT PHYSICS, SPACE EXPLORATION, AND MEDICAL TECHNOLOGY. AFTER THE GUY LEAVES, HE PAUSES AT THE STREET CORNER AND THINKS ABOUT WHAT HE JUST ENCOUNTERED AND THE MORE HE THINKS ABOUT IT, THE MORE CURIOUS HE GETS, SO HE DECIDES TO GO...

The robot revolution is here, at least for your morning caffeine fix. Cafe X Technologies is a new, $25,000 automated barista designed by the award-winning team behind Dr. Dre's Beats headphones and speakers: the Ammunition Group. The Jetsons-style coffeemaker can sling 120 cups of joe per hour at specs that satisfy finicky roasters (and project partners) like Intelligentsia, Ritual and Equator. The robo unit is essentially a fully operational café beneath a six-axis animatronic arm. Customers place orders on a kiosk touchscreen or via the Cafe X app and receive a text when the drink is ready, after around a...

Food Lion has introduced in-store helper Marty the Robot at a store in La Follette, TN. These helpful robots are currently in four Giant/Martin’s stores in Pennsylvania and the brand plans to deploy them to all 171 Giant/Martin’s stores by the end of 2018. These friendly robotic associates have been roaming the aisles of several Giant/Martin’s stores since last year, and now Food Lion is also putting the concept to the test. Marty maneuvers around using advanced artificial intelligence and the same laser imaging technology found in self-driving vehicles. He can perform checks that help the store run more smoothly...

If a Terminator pours coffee in your lap, who's to blame? The Terminator or Skynet? Who the hell knows at this point. Quick question: If a Terminator traveled back in time and accidentally spilled hot coffee on your lap, who would you sue? The Terminator or Skynet. Tricky question, and one that European lawmakers are . The issue is with a report from the European Commission, , that suggests creating a "legal status for in the long run" so they could be "responsible for making good any damage they may cause".

A BBC presenter was reduced to tears while visiting a Japanese factory which mass-produces sex toy robots - including petite dolls with 'kid-like' qualities. Having travelled to Japan to learn more about the industry for the BBC Three documentary Sex Robots and Us, James Young visited a factory in an industrial suburb of Tokyo, where he was left shocked by the petite size of some of its ultra-realistic dolls. The visibly disturbed presenter grew tearful as he grilled manufacturer Hiro Okawa about one particularly small doll, who told him the 'actual age setting' was left to customers' 'imagination'.

Technological progress has frequently resulted in changes in the nature of work, sometimes affecting skilled workers more and sometimes affecting unskilled workers more. But whichever categories of worker were affected, such changes have almost universally been to the benefit of workers of all skill levels. Let’s consider two or three professions of the past.Take the “tanner.” Before technology transformed the nature of such work, Wikipedia tells us that tanning “was considered a noxious or ‘odoriferous trade’ and relegated to the outskirts of town, amongst the poor… The ancient tanner might use his bare feet to knead the skins in dung...

Artificial intelligence is getting smarter every day. While we have a long way to go before robots become self-aware, any robot that comes to know it's a robot could kick off the machine uprising that so many science-fiction dystopias warn about. Fortunately, there might be another way — at least according to renowned theoretical physicist Michio Kaku. My Heart Is Human, My Blood Is Boiling, My Brain I.B.M. "Robots are pretty stupid now. However, eventually they'll be as smart as a mouse, then a rat, then a rabbit, then a cat, then a dog. By the end of the century,...

As automation and AI destroy millions of middle-income jobs, permanently forcing (primarily male) workers from the workforce, Americans are beginning to reconsider their attitudes toward a radical policy tool that’s popular among some segments of the left: Universal Basic Income. According to CNBC, a recent poll conducted by Northeastern University and Gallup found that 48% of Americans support the measure. In an association that’s hardly a coincidence, the poll also showed that three-quarters of Americans believe machines will take away more jobs than they’ll generate… Unsurprisingly 65% of Democrats want to see a universal basic income and 54% of people...

A recent article in The Guardian dons the foreboding title "Robots will destroy our jobs — and we're not ready for it." The article claims, "For every job created by robotic automation, several more will be eliminated entirely. ... This disruption will have a devastating impact on our workforce." According to an article in MIT Technology Review, business researchers Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee believe that rapid technological change has been destroying jobs faster than it is creating them, contributing to the stagnation of median income and the growth of inequality in the United States. If technology is destroying jobs...

The future of sex robots is closer than ever, and more and more people are open to having a romantic, sexual relationship with them. Take Roxxxy, billed as the world’s first sex robot, not to be confused with sex dolls that can’t move or communicate. For just under $10,000, users can customize her or her male counterpart, Rocky, by selecting a hair style and color, eye color, skin tone, fingernail and toenail style, and even the shape and color of its pubic hair (if any). These robots converse, respond to touch, and perform movements such as hip thrusts.

Just when you thought it was advanced computer systems and the military that were out to get us, it turns out that sex robots - the very machines designed to give us pleasure - could be about to kill us too. Sex robots have been with us for quite a few years now and they have already attracted their fair share of warnings and controversy. However, a warning from Dr Nick Patterson, a cybersecurity lecturer at Deakin University, Australia has to be the starkest yet.  He believes that in the future sex robots could be easier for hackers to access and control than a laptop...

Why China’s ammunition factories are being turned over to robots ‘Smart machines’ could treble bomb and shell production capacity in less than a decade PUBLISHED : Monday, 01 January, 2018, 8:21pm UPDATED : Monday, 01 January, 2018, 11:28pm Robots could treble China’s bomb and shell production capacity in less than a decade according to a senior scientist involved in a programme that is using artificial intelligence to boost the productivity of ammunition factories. Xu Zhigang, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Shenyang Institute of Automation and a lead scientist with China’s “high-level weapon system intelligent manufacturing programme”, told...

In San Francisco, autonomous crime-fighting robots that are used to patrol parking lots, sports arenas, and tech company campuses are now being deployed to keep away homeless people. The San Francisco Business Times reported last week that the San Francisco SPCA, an animal advocacy and pet adoption group, put a security robot to work outside its facilities in the gentrifying Mission neighborhood. The robot's presence is meant to deter homeless people from setting up camps along the sidewalks. Last week, the City of San Francisco ordered the SF SPCA to keep its robot off the streets or be fined...

Hillary Clinton spoke about the dangers of artificial intelligence in a radio interview with Hugh Hewitt on Wednesday. The failed presidential candidate was on Hewitt's show to promote her book, but the conversation steered towards recent advances in technology. Something that concerns Clinton is the potential for our society to become inundated with artificial intelligence - computers that mimic the human brain to complete tasks for us - such as home office assistants or even robot drones. Clinton says that AI can be a good thing, but she's worried that our society is rushing into a brave new world without...

Swarms of drones buzz overhead, while robotic vehicles crawl across the landscape. Orbiting satellites snap high-resolution images of the scene far below. Not one human being can be seen in the pre-dawn glow spreading across the land. This isn’t some post-apocalyptic vision of the future à la The Terminator. This is a snapshot of the farm of the future. Every phase of the operation—from seed to harvest—may someday be automated, without the need to ever get one’s fingernails dirty. In fact, it’s science fiction already being engineered into reality. Today, robots empowered with artificial intelligence can zap weeds with preternatural...

Agriculture is big business in Indiana. The US Census Bureau places the Hoosier State firmly in the top ten farming states with 11.2 billion dollars in annual sales. Farmers, faced with a labor shortage and declining profit, are quickly adopting robotic technology to ensure their family businesses stay afloat. These farms, like Superior Dairy in Garrett, are not your father’s farms. Not Your Father’s Farm Step onto the lot of Superior Dairy in Garrett, and the smell hits you right away. It’s not foul, not like a hog farm. Instead, it’s earthy, with notes of hay, mud and hints of...

Yanis Varoufakis resigned as finance minister of Greece after only six months on the job, following what he described as his own “complete failure” to negotiate a resolution of his country’s debts. A little over two years later, he has restored sufficient confidence in his views to predict the end of capitalism. Varoufakis told an audience at University College London a few days ago that large technology corporations and artificial intelligence will cause capitalism to undermine itself, with technology eliminating more jobs than it creates. As an example, he cited Google, the search engine giant that after less than 20...

LONDON: A humanoid robot took the stage at the Future Investment Initiative yesterday and had an amusing exchange with the host to the delight of hundreds of delegates. Smartphones were held aloft as Sophia, a robot designed by Hong Kong company Hanson Robotics, gave a presentation that demonstrated her capacity for human expression. Sophia made global headlines when she was granted Saudi citizenship, making the kingdom the first country in the world to offer its citizenship to a robot. “I want to live and work with humans so I need to express the emotions to understand humans and build trust...

Robots may be coming for some jobs, but they will likely create new roles as well. Here are some spots humans are needed to fill and how to get them. It has become common to joke about how robots are going to take our jobs, and rightfully so: Oxford University researchers estimate that 47% of all current US employment is at high risk to become automated over the next decade or so. But there is positive news: Of the 1.8 million jobs AI will get rid of, the emerging field will create 2.3 million by 2020, according to a recent...

A new partnership between Rolls-Royce and Google will see ships become smarter and self-learning thanks to advanced machine learning algorithms. It will also bring the company’s vision of a fully autonomous ship setting sail by 2020 a step closer to reality. Rolls Royce announced this month that it will use Google’s Cloud Machine Learning Engine across a range of applications, designed to both make today’s ships safer and more efficient, and to launch the ships of tomorrow. Initially the machine learning engine will be used to further train existing AI algorithms designed to power the image recognition systems of vessels....