Social Skills Won’t Save Us From the Robot Revolution

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Sure, computers can win a game of chess or do your accounting. But they’ll never have the social skills of—

Feeling sad? Soon your dolls will be able to tell. To demonstrate the power of a new chip that can run artificially intelligent algorithms, researchers have put it in a doll and programmed it to recognise emotions in facial images captured by a small camera.

The doll can recognise eight emotions in total, including surprise and happiness….Recent advances in AI mean we already have algorithms that can recognise objects, lip-read, make basic decisions and more. It’s only a matter of time before these abilities make their way on to little cheap chips like this one, and then put into consumer devices.

Oh. Maybe social skills aren’t going to save us after all. New Scientist has the rest of the story here.

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And the essential ingredient that makes all this possible? Readers like you.

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