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The staff at John & Tony’s Steakhouse in West Chicago know the couple well: There’s 54-year-old John – a genial man with a big, partially toothless smile who works in truck deliveries – and his wife, Jackie, a petite, dark-haired beauty in a wheelchair whose favorite dish is bacon-wrapped dates. The inseparable pair are staples at John & Tony’s, and it’s their annual dining spot for celebrating Valentine’s Day – but the wait staff are accustomed to taking other reservation calls, too, from people who simply want to sit near them to observe John’s doting love. Because Jackie is no...

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — The security force of the future is already patrolling several neighborhoods in the Tri-State Area. The robotic protectors can see what you’re doing and even talk back to you, but the machines created by a New Yorker have prompted serious privacy concerns, CBS2’s Clark Fouraker reported Tuesday. One of the models, named “Rosie,” uses the same technology as a self-driving car to patrol the sidewalks at the Lefrak City Apartments in Queens.

I was falsely accused of having an affair and fathering a child with a woman I never met. A WOMAN I NEVER MET. I am a reasonably locally-prominent person. I had the misfortune of being on the front page of a local paper one day when a lady I'd never met gave birth. I gave a lot of money to a school. She saw me on the paper. She saw I was wealthy and reasonably important. So when the clerk came in with the birth certificate form to fill out, she put my name. She went on welfare and concocted...

Human sex workers are fighting back against sex robots, claiming they are dehumanizing and could turn users into predators. Three women who work at Sheila's Ranch in Nevada toldThe Sun they were firmly against the new technology, which has created dolls that look like humans, used for sex acts. They say the dolls are dehumanizing, encourage violence against women and promote a lack of empathy in sexual scenarios.

Robots can develop prejudices like “racism and sexism” all on their own, a shocking new study has found. Artificial intelligence experts performed thousands of simulations on robot brains, revealing how they split off into groups and treat “outsiders” differently. Computer scientists and psychologists from Cardiff University and MIT teamed up to test how robots identify each other.

... the pilots cited cases where, they argued, the action of pilots had saved an airplane and its passengers when the computers could not have. In at least two of those cases they had a point. In January 2009 Captain “Sully” Sullenberger saved the lives of 150 passengers by making an emergency landing on the Hudson River. And in November, 2010 what would have been one of the world’s worst air disasters was averted when Captain Richard de Crespigny of the Australian airline Qantas managed to get a giant Airbus A380 that had been badly crippled by an exploding engine...

There could be a future where robots will do most of your grocery shopping for you. And for some Walmart shoppers, that future is getting even closer. Walmart (WMT), the world’s largest seller of groceries, will begin piloting a robotics system for its fast-growing online grocery pickup (OGP) service in one of its stores. The retailer has teamed up with Massachusetts-based Alert Innovation to deploy its Alphabot, a first-of-its-kind technology, in its supercenter store in Salem, New Hampshire just off of Interstate 93. “This is about the evolution of retail,” Alert Innovation CEO John Lert told Yahoo Finance. “So, we...

As the advancement of technology continues to replace the need for human labor, American History X director Tony Kaye is undertaking a new — and maybe controversial — step in filmmaking by employing an Artificial Intelligent (A.I.) actor as the lead in his next film, 2nd Born. Unlike Robin Williams’ 1999 film Bicentennial Man or the Steven Spielberg-directed A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Kaye is aiming to cast a real robot, who will be trained in different acting methods and techniques. The idea, which originated from Kaye and producer Sam Khoze, is to forgo the use of computer-generated effects in favor of...

San Francisco is ground zero for tech companies, from social media to bioengineering. It’s also a city obsessed with food, and often the first destination for international chains like Michelin-starred Tsuta Ramen to break into the U.S. market. It’s a city teeming with early adopters and forward thinkers, like the team behind Creator, both a restaurant and a culinary robotics company that will offer the world’s first robot-made burgers when it opens June 27. The machine isn’t a parody of a human with robotic arms and fingers, flipping burgers and assembling buns on a conveyor belt. It’s an all-inclusive burger-making...

There’s a special place in hell for anyone who would sexually harm a child. Just the mention of it makes me physically ill. Congress is now cracking down on disgusting “child sex dolls” designed to simulate rape… some which can even be customized to look like actual kids. Yes – these exist in the world. I wish I didn’t know that. According to this: The U.S. Congress has taken action to stop the importation of child sex dolls and robots, some of which can be custom-ordered to look like specific real-life children and can be programmed to simulate rape.

Everybody has the right to a living wage. It's the responsibility of employers to pay their workers enough to live on comfortably, no matter what sort of work they do. No matter what it costs. No matter how much or how little value an individual employee provides. A job is a human right, and if you pay your employees anything less than a designated amount -- an amount that is not, and will never be, designated by you -- then you're a fascist and you'll be shamed and slandered and picketed until you comply. F*** your laws of economics, you...

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...