No need to be weirded out by video conference meetings, Skype or FaceTime anymore guys, there’s a robot for that. The Socibot will translate the faces you’d make in person, just, you know, on a robot.
Roombas have given humanity so much—clean floors, kitten transportation, wonderful GIFs. But how can the grateful owners of the world reward they? Roombas care not for trinkets. So, apparently, the vast majority of people give them names.
Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, isn't a great destination for orderly-traffic fetishists. Generally, it's chaos. But, if you happen to be a much more exciting giant robot fetishist, it's a great place, all thanks to inventor Isaie Therese and her 8-foot tall traffic control robots.
People. I have consistently warned you about the impending takeover of our society by our robot overlords. This is not a joke. They are coming.
Forget your dreams of a non-robot overlord filled future, because shit just got real. A couple of TIME reporters stumbled upon a telemarketing robot who is apparently designed so well, it actually knows how to lie and tell people it's a real person.
Another day on the Internet, another excuse to wonder if and when technology is going to turn the landscape of interpersonal human relationships into some kind of unrecognizable Garden of Simulated Delights. Another chance to speculate whether the world of the future will be populated by people wantonly having…
Maybe you didn't wake up today thinking that all your Monday needed was a video of Scandinavian wood sprite/pop star Robyn meeting her robot doppelgänger and that's fine! The human mind is fickle and we don't always immediately know what we want. So trust me when I tell you that you want to watch Robyn hang out with…
Ugh, Facebook, could just quit creepin' on my shit all the time? Like, it's fine if you want to provide a convenient platform for me to accidentally let my mom know that I got a parking tickets, for obviously fake people named "Dennis" to sexually proposition me, and for misogynists to steal my pics and photoshop…
Technologists insist upon the impending arrival of the singularity, a time at which human technology (particularly artificial intelligence) progresses to the point that we create a greater-than human intelligence. With this arrival of this intelligence, human civilization — and possibly even human nature itself —…
Which would be worse: finding out that Jayden — your dreamy heart gif-inducing cyberboyfriend with the Bieber hair — is actually a seriously disturbed middle aged woman from the next town over OR discovering that your perfect e-man, the one who just seems to get you, is actually a social computer program designed to…
If you have ever taken a moment to pause and contemplate the fact that we've been in the 2000s for thirteen entire years, it's likely that you've asked yourself where the hell the robots are. Shouldn't we have them by now? And, more pressingly, if your future robot butler does manage to claw its way out of the…
Most women who undergo hysterectomies are left with multi-inch incisions above the pubic hair line. But a new case report in the Journal of Minimal Access Surgery found that robots, using a three-dimensional view and precise "chopstick" arm movements, can perform the same surgery using only a single point of entry,…
While it's a fairly well-accepted fact that GOP Presidential nominee Mitt Romney's strange behavior is best explained by the theory that he's actually an advanced humanlike robot controlled remotely by a crazed billionaire villain in a volcano lair, Hillary Clinton has largely escaped similar Replicant scrutiny. But…
Watch out, backup dancers of the world: the robots are coming for your jobs. Now, if only those of us humans who desperately resort to doing the robot on the dance floor could take a lesson from these amazing little techno dudes, our parties would look so much cooler.
A Filipino company called Manikako that teaches kids how to make their own dolls out of old clothes and other recycled materials collaborated with Energizer, Revolver, Post Manila and TBWA\SMP to create a WALL-E-esque ad that Adrant describes as "a charming love story," but that I find borderline creepy. Just…
Dana Zemack has been making stick figure comics since she was 12. This week, she made one just for us.
Ever wonder why so many automated voices—think the iPhone's Siri, your GPS lady, the woman who gives you your voicemail—are female? NPR's Scott Simon did a little digging into this topic, and the consensus seems to be that women's voices are used because they're perceived as being more comforting. As one expert put it,
Because scientists are middle-schoolers at heart, like the rest of us, they decided to pit two Cleverbots — artifical-intelligence chat programs — against one another and see what kind of conversation ensued. The result was odd, impolite, and pretty funny. Inspired by this, I decided to have a chat with a Cleverbot…
Finally, scientists have created something useful instead of just studying how sitting is going to kill us all. Behold "BakeBot," the cookie-baking robot. It doesn't mix the ingredients well and can only make one giant, 12-inch cookie pie, but we're now one step closer to having clumsy, $400,000 robot maids. And…
A writer for StarWars.com promised to love, honor, and cherish the beeping droid in front of a small crowd of onlookers, and, bizarrely, former America's Next Top Model titleholder Adrienne Curry. I'm a little surprised; all these years I thought he and C3PO would end up together.
